Haunted Selves, Haunting Places in English Literature and Culture
offers a series of readings of poetry, the novel and other forms of art
and cultural expression, to explore the relationship between subject and
landscape, self and place. Utilizing an interdisciplinary approach
grounded in close reading, the text places Jacques Derrida's work on
spectrality in dialogue with particular aspects of phenomenology. The
volume explores writing and culture from the 1880s to the present day,
proceeding through four sections examining related questions of
identity, memory, the landscape, and our modern relationship to the
past. Julian Wolfreys presents a theoretically informed understanding of
the efficacy of literature and culture in connecting us to the past in
an affective and engaged manner.