From Ghostly Hooves to Phantom Voices: Sound as a Source of Anxiety in Selected British Ghost Stories

• Název práce v češtině: Dusot přízračných kopyt a hlasy zjevení: Zvuk coby zdroj úzkosti ve vybraných britských duchařských povídkách
• Název v anglickém jazyce: From Ghostly Hooves to Phantom Voices: Sound as a Source of Anxiety in Selected British Ghost Stories
• Klíčová slova: Vernon Lee|Margaret Oliphant|William Hope Hodgson|Edith Nesbit|duchařské povídky|zvuk|napětí|vypravěčské techniky
• Klíčová slova anglicky: Vernon Lee|Margaret Oliphant|William Hope Hodgson|Edith Nesbit|ghost stories|sound|anxiety|narrative strategies
• Akademický rok vypsání: 2021/2022
• Typ práce: bakalářská práce
• Jazyk práce: angličtina
• Ústav: Ústav anglofonních literatur a kultur (21-UALK)
• Vedoucí / školitel: Mgr. Petra Johana Poncarová, Ph.D.
• Řešitel: skrytý - zadáno a potvrzeno stud. odd.
• Datum přihlášení: 07.03.2022
• Datum zadání: 07.03.2022
• Schválení administrátorem: zatím neschvalováno
• Datum potvrzení stud. oddělením: 14.03.2022
• Datum a čas obhajoby: 31.01.2023 10:00
• Datum odevzdání elektronické podoby: 09.01.2023
• Datum proběhlé obhajoby: 31.01.2023
• Odevzdaná/finalizovaná: odevzdaná studentem a finalizovaná
• Oponenti: PhDr. Zdeněk Beran, Ph.D.

Zásady pro vypracování

This BA thesis is going to explore the use of sound as a means of creating tension and anxiety in four British ghost stories: William Hope Hodgson’s “The Horse of the Invisible” (1910), Vernon Lee’s “A Wicked Voice” (1890), Margaret Oliphant’s “The Open Door” (1882), and Edith Nesbit’s “The Mass for the Dead” (1912). Each of the stories employs a different kind of sound. In “The Horse of the Invisible”, it is an animal sound, in “The Open Door” it is a child’s voice repeating a phrase, in “A Wicked Voice”, one encounters the voice of a spectral castrato, and “The Mass for the Dead” features church music. The thesis will discuss the relationships between those who haunt and those who are haunted in connection to the sound, and also various properties of the sounds, such as who hears them, whether they are connected to a specific place or a situation, and how do characters respond to them and explain them. To broaden the scope of the argument, it will also refer to other famous ghost and horror stories where sound plays a prominent role, for example to works by Charles Dickes or Edgar Allan Poe.

Seznam odborné literatury

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Caballero, Carlo. “‘A Wicked Voice’: On Vernon Lee, Wagner, and the Effects of Music.” Victorian Studies 35, no. 4 (Summer, 1992).
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Margree, Victoria. “The Feminist Orientation in Edith Nesbit's Gothic Short Fiction.” Women’s Writing, vol. 21 (2014), 425-443
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Scarborough, Dorothy. The Supernatural in Modern English Fiction. London: G. P. Putnam, 1917.
Smajic, Srdjan. “The Trouble with Ghost-Seeing: Vision, Ideology, and Genre in the Victorian Ghost Story.” ELH 70, no. 4 (2003): 1107–35.
Vrettos, Athena. “‘In the Clothes of Dead People’: Vernon Lee and Ancestral Memory.” Victorian Studies 55, no. 2 (2013): 202–11.
Whelan, Lara Baker. “Between Worlds: Class Identity and Suburban Ghost Stories, 1850 to 1880.” Mosaic: An Interdisciplinary Critical Journal 35, no. 1 (2002): 133–48.