‘Ships go by steam now-a-days, and so do ghosts’: The Railway and the Nineteenth-Century European Fantastic

A talk by Dr Patricia García, Senior Researcher in Literary Theory and Comparative Literature at the Universidad de Alcalá (Madrid)

The expansion of the railway in the second half of the nineteenth century profoundly transformed European cities. This transformation has been a central focus of realist novels. In this presentation, however, I explore this phenomenon through the lens of the urban fantastic. My analysis focuses on the “railway ghost story”, examining works set in Paris, London, and Madrid by Marcel Schwob, Charles Dickens and Benito Pérez Galdós. I aim to show how nineteenth-century mobile city life was creatively reimagined by the supernatural in literature, showcasing motifs and concerns that resonate across European literary cultures.

RSVP HERE