"Marley's ghost bothered him  exceedingly.  Every time he resolved within himself, after mature  enquiry, that it was all a dream, his mind flew back again, like a  strong spring released, to its first position, and presented the same  problem to be worked all through, 'Was it a dream or not?." Scrooge's  internal debate accurately reflects the mid-Victorian dichotomy on  Spiritualism, mesmerism and the supernatural. Claire Horton, of  Loughborough University, explains how in Dickens’s time the ability to  see ghosts was linked to mesmerism, a practice that fired the  imagination of the Victorians.
For more information about this talk, see http://readdurhamenglish.wordpress.com/podcasts

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