Samuel Finegan Samuel Finegan i(9049607 works by)
Gender: Male
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Works By

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1 Deaths That Wound : The Traumatic Potential of Ghost Stories Samuel Finegan , 2016 single work criticism
— Appears in: TEXT Special Issue Website Series , October no. 35 2016; 'Trauma presents any writer with difficulties. Trauma lays outside the realm of representation, by definition something that cannot be expressed and that lies beyond ordinary means of recollection and representation. This article examines the close relationship that exists between trauma and ghost fiction. It highlights the potential ghost fictions, as a form of writing about death, offer writers as translators of historical and social trauma. By reading ghost fiction in tandem with scholarship on trauma fiction and autobiographical trauma writing, the article demonstrates how ghost fiction both prefigures a narrative understanding of memory and history in trauma studies, dramatizes some of the processes and risks of first and second party engagement with trauma and offers a unique opportunity to approach, interrogate and alleviate trauma from the outside. In short, ghost fiction enables creative interventions in social and historical memory not by offering realist ‘precise data’, but by ‘speaking for the ones who did not return’.' (Publication abstract)
1 Adolescent Occultism and the Philosophy of Things in Three Novels Samuel Finegan , 2015 single work criticism
— Appears in: Transnational Literature , November vol. 8 no. 1 2015; 'The association of adolescence with supernatural belief is not new. Many social research texts position paranormal belief within the liminality of adolescence – something tested and later outgrown. The particularly North American phenomena of ‘legend tripping,’ for instance, where ‘to test [a] legend, legend trippers will often mark their visits [to sites of urban legends] with specific activities designed to invoke supernatural powers,’ is practiced primarily by older teens and college-age youths as shown by Donald Holly and Casey Cordy in ‘What’s in a Coin?’ and confirmed by Sylvia Ann Grider in ‘Children’s Ghost Stories’.2 Alison Waller’s book Constructing Adolescence in Fantastic Realism similarly attests to the appeal of the supernatural in books written for and about young people. Criticism of these works, however, tends to sideline supernatural content as a site of inquiry and instead ‘prioritise a rational reading of the fantastic focussing on socio-physiological development of adolescents. Magic is explained away as a purely imaginative product of awakened sexuality, and ghosts are read as fabricated alter egos.' (Author's introduction)
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