Locating literature in the ghost hoax: an exploration of 19th-century print news media

[摘要] The industrial revolution brought significant changes to printing technology, culture, and literacy. This thesis explores the way features of orality made their way into fiction through the publication of ghost 'hoax” stories in nineteenth-century newspapers and periodicals. By examining news stories and fiction together, one is able to see the connections and changes across the century, from news stories in 1804 to fiction stories from 1894. This thesis draws source materials from a publicly available web application developed in conjunction with the thesis. This small, curated collection furthers the argument for digital close reading of historical material within its own context and as context for literature, as well as demonstrates non-digital or digital-adjacent interpretive creation in the form of maps. Through the synthesis of fiction and non-fiction, digital and non-digital, this thesis demonstrates a cross-disciplinary breadth of study that allows for both close reading and broad historical analysis.

[发布机构] the University of Pittsburgh