About Telling: Ghosts and Hauntings in Contemporary Drama and Poetry

TLDR: In this article, the authors present a field survey on the history of ghost stories and the theatre, focusing on three main arguments about ghost stories: purpose, method, definitions, and major argument about telling ghost stories.

Abstract: ........................................................................................................................................... ii Acknowledgments ......................................................................................................................... iii Table of Contents .......................................................................................................................... iv List of Figures ................................................................................................................................. vi Preface ............................................................................................................................................ vii 1 Introduction: Speaking of Ghosts ........................................................................................... 1 1.1 Purpose, Method, Definitions ......................................................................................... 1 1.2 Talking Ghosts: On Ghost Stories and Criticism ....................................................... 26 2 How to Tell A Ghost Story .................................................................................................... 45 2.1 Field Survey: A Brief History of Ghost Stories and the Theatre ............................... 45 2.2 Major Argument: About Telling Ghost Stories .......................................................... 52 2.3 Speaking of Ghosts: Conor McPherson’s The Weir ................................................... 61 2.4 An Irish Gothic: Marina Carr’s By the Bog of Cats... ................................................. 76 2.5 Staging South African Photography and the Ghost of Sizwe Banzi ......................... 90 2.6 A Haunting Machine: Theatrical Technologies and Samuel Beckett’s Shades ..... 108 2.7 Haunting Oceans, Mourning Languages: J.M. Synge and Derek Walcott ............ 135 3 Witness to Ghosts ................................................................................................................. 155 3.1 Field Survey: Transnational Poetics and the Globalgothic ..................................... 155 3.2 Major Argument: Voice, Medium, Rhythm, and the Poetry of Dead Metaphors162 3.3 Eavan Boland and the Haunted Chorus .................................................................... 187 3.4 Breyten Breytenbach and the Afrikaans Gothic ....................................................... 209 3.5 Nohow On from Here: Samuel Beckett’s Worsening Writings .............................. 235 3.6 Scholia on a Case Study: Imagining the Zong ........................................................... 259