Lit help me out.
I really want to learn about serious literature that involves the supernatural heavily.
The ghotic is too much of a tease; let me know of pre 20th century literature that allows for the actual supernatural to play a big role.
I'd really love to learn of a Medieval work involving it.
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I'm confused: are you looking for fiction or nonfiction?
What are you expecting to read? Harry Potter's adventures fighting supernatural ghosts on the middle ages with deep philosophical discussions and well-constructed and deep characters?
Oh fuck off there is no reason that in a time period obsessed with mystiscism and religiosity there couldn't be something serious involving spirits.
Either
Hamlet
Macbeth
Also The Tempest
Already read those, I guess I was looking more obscure. I've read most major works of the cannon.
Journey to the West
Tale of Genji
Liaozhai Zhiyi
Arabian Nights
Seven Taoist Masters
Read Robert Kirk's "The Secret Commonwealth." It's a deadly serious treatment of fairies that takes them as actually-existing beings. Written in the middle of the 17th Century by Kirk, who was the seventh son of his father and thus, some believed, had the ability to perceive the ethereal, the cosmic, and the supernatural. The book presents itself as nonfiction, as a field guide of sorts; Kirk really truly believed in what he was writing.
Thanks, I really have been meaning to check out Arabian Nights especially seeing how mich it influenced Lovecraft
just read M. R. James
Sounds teally interesting. I think I heard about this on the Paranormies podcast. I will defintely check it out. Thank you.
Wow he sounds great! I never heard of this guy.
The Monk
Hans Christian Anderson stories
The brothers Grimm stories
and Faust, of course
this is cutting it close with your pre 20th century thing, but yeah, James is fantastic. Along the same lines, get some Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu stuff and The Turn of the Screw by Henry James.
yes
Faust is one of my favorites
I do need to read the monk soon
I'm okay with it just dipping into the 20th. I just wanted to keep it from muddling with commercialism and modernism as much as possible.
I like the old idea of ghosts much more than the modern conception.
>The ghotic is too much of a tease
Well... you could read the King In Yellow and be mind-fucked for a weeks time if you want.
>I'm okay with it just dipping into the 20th. I just wanted to keep it from muddling with commercialism and modernism as much as possible.
In that case, maybe consider Algernon Blackwood and Arthur Machen as well. They don't deal in ghosts entirely, but many of their stories are rooted in the supernatural elements of paganism and nature mysticism.
If you really want to start digging, HP Lovecraft's essay Supernatural Horror in Literature is also a fairly extensive rundown of pre-1930's supernatural fiction.
I was really disappointed by King in Yellow, given all the hype concerning its influence on the Lovecraft circle. Chamber's prose is so clunky and his story-telling is so long winded and boring, and this is coming from a fan of Lovecraft's prose.
ETA Hoffman
Gogol
Odoevsky
The Golden Ass, Apuleius
Gargantua & Pantagruel, Rabelais
The Faerie Queene, Edmund Spenser
Just saw your other reply in regards to pre 20th century literature. You should check out the writings of Gustav Meyrink.
I've been dying to read the Faerie Queen I just have to make time for it
I just ordered that Essay a day ago I am excited for it
And yeah I don't mean ghosts specifically, so I'd be glad for anything