Paul Horn
University of Birmingham, English, Alumnus
- English Literature, English, Synaesthesia, Henry James, Phenomenology of Touch, History of psychical research and parapsychology, and 9 morePsychical Research, The influence of Victorian Spiritualism and Psychical Research in the literature and culture of the long 19th century, Spiritualism (Literature), Embodiment, Bodies and Culture, The Body, Literature and Music, Sound, and Auditory Cultureedit
- My recently completed PhD focuses on the connections between fin de siècle accounts of psychical phenomena and the extraordinary bodily capabilities of the characters in Henry James’s late novels. In reaction to the scholarly commonplace that these characters are simply refined out of corporeal existence, I posit the alternative that their bodies are unco... moreMy recently completed PhD focuses on the connections between fin de siècle accounts of psychical phenomena and the extraordinary bodily capabilities of the characters in Henry James’s late novels. In reaction to the scholarly commonplace that these characters are simply refined out of corporeal existence, I posit the alternative that their bodies are unconventionally constituted: hyperaesthetic like the Society for Psychical Research’s ‘sensitives’, or materially reconfigured like the ‘etheric bodies’ of the dead envisioned by Sir Oliver Lodge, and thus perfectly adapted for life in the phantasmagorical world of James’s ‘major-phase’ and beyond. Against the backdrop of recent scholarly work on the material world of James’s novels by Thomas Otten, Victoria Coulson and others, and theories of embodiment such as those of Didier Anzieu, I assert the importance of fin de siècle psychical research narratives of the hyperextension of human bodily capabilities and their historical collocates in art, literature, and occult philosophy to fully excavate the cultural work with which Henry James’s late novels are involved.
Previously, I completed my undergraduate degree in English at the University, before returning to take an MPhil in Literature and Modernity for which I wrote a thesis exploring the tripartite relationship between telepathy, the visual and Henry James’ novels.edit
This thesis addresses the tripartite relationship between telepathy, the visual and in the psychologically complex late novels of Henry James, with particular focus on The Wings of the Dove (1902), The Ambassadors (1903), and The Golden... more
This thesis addresses the tripartite relationship between telepathy, the visual and in the psychologically complex late novels of Henry James, with particular focus on The Wings of the Dove (1902), The Ambassadors (1903), and The Golden Bowl (1904). It acknowledges that significant research has been done into telepathy (Thurschwell 2001; Luckhurst 2002) and the visual (Crary 1990; 1999) in fin de siècle studies, but also that further insight can be accessed by bringing the two areas of enquiry together and considering their collective import. By juxtaposing non-literary materials from the fields of psychical research and visual culture, and situating them together within the work of James, I attempt to excavate parts of patterns of thought in the period compassing the end of the nineteenth century and the dawning of the twentieth. My work is especially concerned with revealing the slipperiness of the borderlines between three dualisms: observation and imagination, subject and object, and the verbal and the visual. A chapter is dedicated to each. Reading James in this innovative way allows me to conclude by situating his late novels within an extended milieu of literary antecedents, particularly in terms of their debt to the older fictional trope of sympathy.