Introduction

Margree, Victoria; Orrells, Daniel; Vuohelainen, Minna

doi:10.7765/9781526124357.00006

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“…One recent perspective is from the field of Thing Studies, and attempts to understand the charge and significance of objects in Marsh's works (Pittard 2009;Granata 2014;Bhattacharjee 2018;Pedlingham 2018;Allsop 2018). The circulation of Marsh's popular fiction in a newly emerging literary marketplace in the aftermath of the 1870 Education Act is studied by Vuohelainen (2013 and 2014), Margree (2016), and in the editors' introduction to Richard Marsh, Popular Fiction andLiterary Culture, 1890-1915, which argues that Marsh, a prolific professional novelist and journalist, was "one of the motors behind the thriving, commoditised fiction industry of the fin de siècle" (Margree et al 2018a: 1). 160).…”

Section: Shuhita Bhattacharjeementioning

confidence: 99%

Of Mahatmas and Chelas: Theosophy and the “Cartography of the Supernatural” in Richard Marsh and F. Anstey

Battacharjee¹

2019

VPFJ

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The essay examines the way F. Anstey's A Fallen Idol (1886) and Richard Marsh's The Mahatma's Pupil (1893) dramatise the relationship between a Tibetan Theosophical mahatma and a western disciple through the use of cartographic imagery that ultimately subverts colonial hierarchies and exposes western religious anxieties. The novels are characterised by a "cartography of the supernatural" that derives from nineteenth-century scientific and occult ideas of spatiality, that is, both from new fin-de-siècle communication technologies connecting the mainland with colonies, and from the contemporary radical theorisation of occult communication between the east and the west. I argue that the novels effect a radical socio-political restructuration by building on this underlying cartographic imaginary to achieve subversive spatial re-mappings for a western audience. A crucial aspect of this narrative manoeuvre can be seen in the way the novels establish a parallel between the disciple's spatial bafflement surrounding the geographical remoteness of Theosophy and the western failure at grasping the spiritual depths of this colonial faith. The novels therefore ultimately offer a commentary on the desiccated state of western religiosity and the alternative templates of the miraculous offered by the colonial occult.

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Section: Shuhita Bhattacharjeementioning

confidence: 99%

Of Mahatmas and Chelas: Theosophy and the “Cartography of the Supernatural” in Richard Marsh and F. Anstey

Battacharjee¹

2019

VPFJ

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

Introduction

Cited by 1 publication

References 0 publications

Of Mahatmas and Chelas: Theosophy and the “Cartography of the Supernatural” in Richard Marsh and F. Anstey

Of Mahatmas and Chelas: Theosophy and the “Cartography of the Supernatural” in Richard Marsh and F. Anstey

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