Crossing Over: Situating the Gothic Rhetorics of Nineteenth-Century Female-Identified Mediums
Abstract
Rhetorical features of nineteenth-century female mediums are highlighted in order to situate them alongside other women rhetors and writers who challenged nineteenth-century cultural practices and who espoused a sense of enlarged gendered possibilities. They are “border-crossers” who, in trance states, complicate concepts of voice, agency, and collaboration, crossing boundaries of gender, race, and class in liminal rhetorical spaces. Their discourse is prophetic and healing, akin to that of other Victorian Spiritualist or New Thought female figures, and is also a magical variation of Gothic rhetoric, comparable to that of female authors who turned to ghosts and ghostliness in Gothic literature.
Fields of Study & Subjects
Literature: history
themes
analysis
Gothic Literature and Media Analysis
Early Modern Women Writers
Publication details
- Journal / source
- Rhetoric Review
- Volume
- 45
- Issue
- 1
- Pages
- 104–120
- Publication date
- 2 January 2026
- Language
- EN