Literature, Technology and Magical Thinking, 1880–1920

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Literature, Technology and Magical Thinking, 1880–1920 is written by Pamela Thurschwell and published by Cambridge University Press. It's available with International Standard Book Number or ISBN identification 1139428853 (ISBN 10) and 9781139428859 (ISBN 13).

In this 2001 book Pamela Thurschwell examines the intersection of literary culture, the occult and new technology at the fin-de-siècle. Thurschwell argues that technologies began suffusing the public imagination from the mid-nineteenth century on: they seemed to support the claims of spiritualist mediums. Talking to the dead and talking on the phone both held out the promise of previously unimaginable contact between people: both seemed to involve 'magical thinking'. Thurschwell looks at the ways in which psychical research, the scientific study of the occult, is reflected in the writings of such authors as Henry James, George du Maurier and Oscar Wilde, and in the foundations of psychoanalysis. This study offers provocative interpretations of fin-de-siècle literary and scientific culture in relation to psychoanalysis, queer theory and cultural history.