The Seance of Reading. Uncanny designs in modernist writing - Thomas J. Cousineau

The essays gathered here for the shared purpose of conjuring the uncanny return of archaic building-rituals in modern literary works began as a series of guest-lectures that took place in various Romanian universities over a period of several years. I owe my regular visits to the country that has become the center of my professional life since retiring from Washington College in 2013 to The Romanian U. S. Fulbright Commission whose offer of an appointment as a Fulbright Scholar brought me to the University of Bucharest in the Fall of 2014. Weekly meetings with the students who participated in the master s seminar that I offered there were crucial to the gradual shaping of a project that has now achieved its final form a process that in the words of William Butler Yeats involved much stitching and unstitching especially because I wanted the completed work to seem again with Yeats in mind the expression of a moment s thought. Among the many Romanian colleagues who invited me to speak to their students I would like especially to thank Diana Banea Ilinca Diaconu Elena Ionescu Rodica Mihaila Roxana Oltean Ioan Panzaru and Lidia Vianu of the University of Bucharest Ovidiu Matiu Ana-Karina Schneider and Gentiana Stanisor of Lucian Blaga University Ruxandra Cesereanu and Simona Jisa of Babes-Bolyai University Mihnea Dobre of the University of Bucharest s Institute for Research in the Humanities and Gabriela Toma of The National Museum of Romanian Literature.