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August 22, 2026Short Fiction in Theory and Practice

Spectral presences and encrypted absences: Hauntology in the short fiction of A. S. Byatt

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Authors

TTTohid Teymouri

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Overview

Literary analysis reveals spectral logic and psychic crypts in A. S. Byatt's short fiction, highlighting literature as a medium for persistent memory.

Key Points

  • To examine the hauntological dimensions and spectral aesthetics within A. S. Byatt's short fiction collections.
  • Applied Derrida's concept of hauntology, Abraham and Torok's theories of the phantom and psychic crypt, and Gordon's sociological framework of haunting.
  • Analyzed narrative structures across personal, domestic, and cultural registers in Sugar and Other Stories (1992) and Little Black Book of Stories (2005).
  • Identified a persistent spectral logic that disrupts established boundaries between presence and absence, past and present, and the living and the dead.
  • Demonstrated that spectrality operates as intersubjective contagion, material memory, and encrypted loss, establishing literature as a spectral medium.

Cite This Study

Tohid Teymouri (2026) studied this question.

synapsesocial.com/papers/6a895fe4ca7ade938187ed76https://doi.org/10.1386/fict_00153_1
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