{'fraction_non_alphanumeric': 0.014483212639894667, 'fraction_numerical': 0.0, 'mean_word_length': 5.333333333333333, 'pattern_counts': {'":': 0, '<': 0, '<?xml version=': 0, '>': 0, 'https://': 0, 'lorem ipsum': 0, 'www.': 0, 'xml': 0}, 'pii_count': 0, 'substrings_counts': 0, 'word_list_counts': {'cursed_substrings.json': 0, 'profanity_word_list.json': 0, 'sexual_word_list.json': 0, 'zh_pornsignals.json': 0}}
Spectralities in the Renaissance

A major contribution of this work is to characterize the ‘spectral moment’ of early modernity. Two developments in the sixteenth century characterize this moment in particular: the presence of ghosts as an autonomous rhetorical commonplace freed from the confines of theology or votive literature, and the striking epistemological promotion of ghosts as objects of a knowledge legitimised by natural philosophy. By highlighting the ‘spectral moment’ of early modernity, Spectralities in the Renaissance foregrounds the agency of ghosts particularly in property disputes over haunted houses as they were tried before civil courts in Paris, Tours and Bordeaux. Ghosts in these cases did not simply appear as products of their dire and distressing times but rather they had an active role in the resolution of conflicts. Conflicts over haunted houses occurred within both communities (Protestant and Catholic) and families at a time of civil war. And they involved both lay and religious powers, who strove sometimes to confirm their jurisdiction over these affairs and sometimes to thwart the actions of spectral agents. The chronology of this book’s enquiry stops on the brink of trials for superstition conducted against ghosts, by the middle of the seventeenth century. At that precise moment ghosts lost their agency in justice and their very existential substance. A concluding chapter considers the consequences of this pragmatic history of ghosts for the Enlightenment and beyond.