Past hauntings for the future
The return of the Victorian ghost in Caryl Churchill’s Cloud Nine (1979)
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 21722045 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Elisavet Ioannidou (0000-0003-0753-0920, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2025 |
| Volume | 45 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Pages | 319-338 |
| Publication date | 2025-09-02 |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Studies in Theatre and Performance (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1468-2761 • E-ISSN: 2040-0616 |
| Publisher | Informa UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/14682761.2025.2508557 |
| OpenAlex | W4410522605 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 27 |
This article focuses on the appearance of Victorian ghosts in the second act of Caryl Churchill’s play Cloud Nine (1979). I argue that the 1979 setting of this act constitutes: an intermediary point between the twentieth-century attempt to comprehend, learn from, and possibly also reject the Victorian past in favour of the greater liberation of the then-present; and the reconstitution of Victorianism that Margaret Thatcher’s electoral victory initiated in 1979. After situating the play’s Victorian spectres within a broader coeval endeavour to (re)evaluate the Victorian past and its meaning for the late twentieth century, I employ the theoretical lens of hauntology to examine the socio-political meaning of the ghosts. The characters’ willingness or reluctance to engage with the spectres that they encounter in the play shows precisely how the present is historicised and the extent to which a future that subverts hegemonies and mends past ills – rather than perpetuating them – is possible
Art · Art history · Cloud computing · Performance art · Computer Science · Contemporary Literature and Criticism · Crime and Detective Fiction Studies · History · Narrative Theory and Analysis
| Highly cited | No |
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