The Haunted and the Haunters; or the House and the Brain, by Edward Bulwer-Lytton: a Victorian Literary Updating of Pliny the Younger’s Ghost Story (Plin. Ep. 7, 27, 5–11)

Abstract

ABSTRACTPliny the Younger’s letter about ghosts (Plin. Ep. 7, 27, 5–11) (1st- 2nd century A.D.) has exerted a great influence on Gothic literature, in which it has been revived in a number of ways. In Bulwer-Lytton’s The Haunted and the Haunters (1859) Pliny’s text is again present in form as well as in content, thanks to a process of literary updating that works on different levels of the narrative scheme (the narrator-narratee dialogue, physical and temporal space, the description of the ghost, the fears of the victims, the protagonist’s reaction, and the resolution of the conflict). As this article will demonstrate, in this example of intertextuality Pliny’s letter ceases to be a mere literary source and becomes part of a modern literary convention, showing how intertextuality may function through a complex system of connections and can embrace areas that go beyond the text itself.