Les voyages dans les ghost stories de Montagu Rhodes James : à la découverte d’horizons inattendus

This paper will examine the meaning and modalities of travelling and « the horizon » in five ghost stories from M. R. James’s 1904 collection Ghost Stories of an Antiquary featuring erudite Englishmen, most of whom Oxbridge academics and researchers, specialising in archaeology or history. These pri...

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Main Author: Françoise Dupeyron-Lafay
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Presses Universitaires de la Méditerranée 2012-06-01
Series:Cahiers Victoriens et Edouardiens
Subjects:
Online Access:https://journals.openedition.org/cve/1658
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author Françoise Dupeyron-Lafay
author_facet Françoise Dupeyron-Lafay
author_sort Françoise Dupeyron-Lafay
collection DOAJ
description This paper will examine the meaning and modalities of travelling and « the horizon » in five ghost stories from M. R. James’s 1904 collection Ghost Stories of an Antiquary featuring erudite Englishmen, most of whom Oxbridge academics and researchers, specialising in archaeology or history. These prim and fussy bachelors embark on their scholarly field studies in a very buoyant mood, hoping to make key discoveries in situ although the prospect of travelling somewhat disturbs them, the more so as four out of five of them have to go abroad and stay at foreign inns or hotels... As a matter of fact, James perpetuates the period Gothic tradition whereby foreign countries — and more especially « Papist » ones — symbolise danger and threat. Moreover, as could be expected in ghost stories, in which anxiety and terror are prerequisites of the genre, the characters’ journeys will not have gratifying intellectual results but will be traumatic and lead to unpalatable intimate discoveries. All five characters experience something terrifying, descend into literal and metaphoric depths, and one of them even meets his death because of it. But ironically, even if the things or creatures that menace them initially seem alien to them, they turn out to be part of them, as in Freud’s uncanny.
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spelling doaj-art-15540a001c5f4b10bfa42a884f8bfafb2025-01-30T10:21:33ZengPresses Universitaires de la MéditerranéeCahiers Victoriens et Edouardiens0220-56102271-61492012-06-017513114410.4000/cve.1658Les voyages dans les ghost stories de Montagu Rhodes James : à la découverte d’horizons inattendusFrançoise Dupeyron-LafayThis paper will examine the meaning and modalities of travelling and « the horizon » in five ghost stories from M. R. James’s 1904 collection Ghost Stories of an Antiquary featuring erudite Englishmen, most of whom Oxbridge academics and researchers, specialising in archaeology or history. These prim and fussy bachelors embark on their scholarly field studies in a very buoyant mood, hoping to make key discoveries in situ although the prospect of travelling somewhat disturbs them, the more so as four out of five of them have to go abroad and stay at foreign inns or hotels... As a matter of fact, James perpetuates the period Gothic tradition whereby foreign countries — and more especially « Papist » ones — symbolise danger and threat. Moreover, as could be expected in ghost stories, in which anxiety and terror are prerequisites of the genre, the characters’ journeys will not have gratifying intellectual results but will be traumatic and lead to unpalatable intimate discoveries. All five characters experience something terrifying, descend into literal and metaphoric depths, and one of them even meets his death because of it. But ironically, even if the things or creatures that menace them initially seem alien to them, they turn out to be part of them, as in Freud’s uncanny.https://journals.openedition.org/cve/1658GothichorizonGhost storiesJames (M. R.)travellinguncanny
spellingShingle Françoise Dupeyron-Lafay
Les voyages dans les ghost stories de Montagu Rhodes James : à la découverte d’horizons inattendus
Cahiers Victoriens et Edouardiens
Gothic
horizon
Ghost stories
James (M. R.)
travelling
uncanny
title Les voyages dans les ghost stories de Montagu Rhodes James : à la découverte d’horizons inattendus
title_full Les voyages dans les ghost stories de Montagu Rhodes James : à la découverte d’horizons inattendus
title_fullStr Les voyages dans les ghost stories de Montagu Rhodes James : à la découverte d’horizons inattendus
title_full_unstemmed Les voyages dans les ghost stories de Montagu Rhodes James : à la découverte d’horizons inattendus
title_short Les voyages dans les ghost stories de Montagu Rhodes James : à la découverte d’horizons inattendus
title_sort les voyages dans les ghost stories de montagu rhodes james a la decouverte d horizons inattendus
topic Gothic
horizon
Ghost stories
James (M. R.)
travelling
uncanny
url https://journals.openedition.org/cve/1658
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