„Embodied Narration: Death and Dying in Henry James‘s Ghost Stories“ – Presentation, Lecture and Interpretation of

Heike Hartung has worked as a university lecturer and

research fellow at the Freie Universität Berlin, the University

of Greifswald and the University of Potsdam. She has earned

her PhD in English Studies at the Freie Universität Berlin and

her PhD habil. in English Literature and Cultural Studies at

the University of Potsdam, where she is associated as an

independent scholar. In her publications she applies the methods of literary

theory and cultural studies to the interdisciplinary fields of aging, disability

and gender studies. Her research interests further include narrative theory

and the history of the novel. She has earned research fellowships from the

German Research Foundation (DFG), the University of Potsdam and the

University of Graz. She is a founding member of the European Network in

Aging Studies and a co-editor of the Aging Studies publication

series.

THE ALTAR OF THE DEAD BY HENRY JAMES

He had a mortal dislike, poor Stransom, to lean anniversaries, and loved

them still less when they made a pretence of a figure. Celebrations and

suppressions were equally painful to him, and but one of the former found

a place in his life. He had kept each year in his own fashion the date of Mary

Antrim’s death. It would be more to the point perhaps to say that this occasion

kept him: it kept him at least effectually from doing anything else. It took hold

of him again and again with a hand of which time had softened but never

loosened the touch. He waked to his feast of memory as consciously as he

would have waked to his marriage-morn. …