Holy Ghost Writers: Spectrality, Intertextuality and Religion in 'Wolf Hall' and 'Fludd'

Arnold, Lucy ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3707-3409 (2018) Holy Ghost Writers: Spectrality, Intertextuality and Religion in 'Wolf Hall' and 'Fludd'. In: Hilary Mantel : Contemporary Critical Perspectives. Contemporary Critical Perspectives . Bloomsbury, London, pp. 117-132. ISBN 978-1-4742-9650-2

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Abstract

From an early age, Hilary Mantel's conception of the Catholic faith was predicated on an understanding 'that the world is not what you see;[. . .] beyond appearances there is another reality'. It is this framing that provides the impetus for her work, the urge to see 'beyond' manifesting itself perhpas most potently in the various spectres and phantoms that populate much of her writing. While the ghosts of Mantel's literary project frequently find themsleves uncoupled from an overtly religious context, the sacred and the spectral find striking intersections in two of her novels in particular:'Fludd' and 'Wolf Hall'. My chapter interrogates the ways in which Mantel uses haunting and spectrality to meditate on authorship and authority, ultimately positing that 'Fludd' and 'Wolf Hall' powerfully assert intertectuality as a mode of haunting in its own right.

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