Includes bibliographical references (p. [219]-239) and index
Introduction: A new world : modern spiritualism in Russia, 1853-1870s -- Seance as test, or, Russian writers at a spiritualist rendezvous -- Russian glubbdubdrib : the shade of false Dimitry and Russian historical imagination in the age of realism -- Dead poets' society : Pushkin's shade in Russian cultural mythology of the second half of the nineteenth century -- Flickering hands : the spiritualist realism of Nikolai Vagner -- The middle world : the realist spiritualism of Saltykov-Schedrin -- The underworld : Dostoevsky's ontological realism -- The (dis)infection : art and hypnotism in Leo Tolstoy -- Epilogue: The spirit of literature : reflections on Leskov's artistic spiritualism
"Foregrounding the important role that nineteenth-century spiritualism played in the period's aesthetic, ideological, and epistemological debates, Ilya Vinitsky challenges literary scholars who have considered spiritualism to be archaic and peripheral to other cultural issues of the time. Ghostly Paradoxes ;s an innovative work of literary scholarship that traces the reactions of Russia's major realist authors to spiritualist events and doctrines and demonstrates that both movements can be understood only when examined together."--Jacket
