Ghostly Sensations in Walter de la Mare's Texts: Reading the Body as a Haunted House

Abstract

Abstract:In select writings Walter de la Mare thinks about ghostly sensations inherent in the act of reading: sensations that are felt not only in the mind but also in the body and that a text can transmit. By analyzing how the ghostly sensations in de la Mare's poetry and prose closely correlate to the act of reading, this article explores how he stretched out and redefined the boundaries of the ghost story or what it is to experience the ghostly in literature. Through reading his texts, one's body becomes haunted by "strange visitants"—ghosts of characters, phantoms of texts, almost inaudible sounds, or the ghostly sensations in the embodied experience of reading. The reader internalizes the texts, and the texts seem almost to internalize the reader: an effect that only the individual reader can recognize when one returns to the texts oneself, as if by a personal mark or footprint.