The Radical Ghost and Narrative Time

Abstract

This paper explores ghostly encounters and their relationship to narrative and time in fiction. This paper argues that the presence of the ghost within a narrative signals the potential for social and ideological change within the diegesis by problematising socio-cultural expectations of the ubiquity of linear time as they pertain to institutions of power.  This paper considers three texts Charles Dickens’s novella A Christmas Carol, the second Pablo Larraín’s film Spencer and finally the BBC’s 1992 mockumentary Ghostwatch.