Guided by Voices: Poetry, the Paranormal, and Mythmaking

This dissertation reconsiders the relationship between nineteenth and twentieth century artists and the paranormal. Historically, the term “paranormal” has denoted an array of otherworldly phenomena that has captivated artists and the public alike. Indeed, this period, host to William Blake’s spiritual visions and William Butler Yeats’s ghostly dictations, showcases the indelible influence the paranormal has had on art. Unsurprisingly, this influence has long attracted critical attention. The prevailing narrative of critics such as Leon Surette and Helen Sword argues that the period’s artists expressed their paranormal interests by aestheticizing the practices of spiritualist movements, which professed the existence of a “spirit world” that could be contacted by humans via séances or psychic mediums. But there has been little consideration of how artists identified these interests with the very mechanics of artistic creation, believing art could engage otherworldly phenomena in ways that spiritualist techniques could not.

In Guided by Voices, I argue that a diverse strand of nineteenth and twentieth century artists conceived of poetry as an access point to a transgressive, generative kind of paranormality. Some, for instance, understood the poetical text and its creator as haunted entities, while others believed their poetry-making could conjure spirits. Regardless, these poets all turned to the paranormal to achieve liberation. In their quest to expand the imaginative possibilities of their craft, they invoked the paranormal to revolutionize our perceptions of language, humanity, and politics. When read as such, their work comprises a distinct historical arc, a tradition of liberated poetics that unifies artists across disparate times and spaces. Hence, Guided by Voices not only reassess artistic engagements with the paranormal but also illuminates conceptual-historical links between artists that scholarship has not yet recognized.

Over three chapters and an epilogue, I demonstrate how parapoiesis, the unique enmeshment of poetry and the paranormal, enables a series of liberations: liberation from embodiment; liberation from poetic form; liberation from individuality; and liberation from sociohistorical reality. Close readings of primary sources direct my assertions, as do some wide-ranging theoretical reference points. I harness Jacques Derrida’s concept of hauntology to help articulate my definition of the paranormal, for example, and I incorporate Georges Bataille’s ideas about the mythic to flesh out my examination of poetical mythmaking. The project does, however, draw as much from a popular imaginary as it does academic discourses; folk spirituality’s characterizations of ghosts, magic, and the occult also help anchor my claims.

Ultimately, I argue that parapoiesis’ significance lies in its capacity to transform, often in a material sense, our world. Parapoiesis illustrates how and why poets perceive their works’ relationship with paranormality as intrinsic, procreative, and alchemical. I contend that these poets reveal a broader facet of nineteenth and twentieth century artistic production which maintains a contemporary resonance and usefulness: art’s paranormal entanglements deconstruct prevailing ideological narratives and histories, imagine alternative, liberatory ones, and, in doing so, alter the very material conditions within which culture itself germinates.