Kardecist spiritism and the French popular novel of the “Belle Époque”

The article examines the presence of spiritist and occult themes in mass literature of the ‟Belle Époque” in France. It highlights the significance of spiritism for the culture of everyday life in the mid-19th century and the revival of this trend during the specified period. In the 1880s–1900s, alongside the publication of theoretical works, there was a transformation of spiritist practices (primarily table-turning) into an element of social entertainment. Spiritist practices, perceived by mass literature figures primarily as a means of maintaining reader interest, often became the subject of critical, ironic, or outright parodic representation. This theme infiltrates both traditional modifications of the popular novel and the newly established genre of mass reading during the ‟Belle Époque” – ‟the novel of scientific miracles”, which achieved a great success with the public. Alongside space science fiction, which paid significant attention to occult and spiritist attributes and imagery, this narrative resource is successfully integrated into novels dealing with the intrusion of the extraordinary into everyday life.