Victorian Literary Mesmerism (Costerus NS 160) (Costerus New Series)

Victorian Literary Mesmerism examines the engagement between literature and mesmerism in Victorian writing. Drawing on recent trends in interdisciplinary literary scholarship the essays collected here investigate the complex connections between scientific mesmerism, its manifestations in the Victorian social and cultural world, and the literary imagination. Here, for the first time, the varied themes and contexts shaped by mesmeric practices are brought together in one volume. Mesmerism's influence on phrenology, medicine and mental health; its interaction with the occult and with communication technologies; the effects of mesmeric principles on gender and sexuality, as well as on criminal behaviour, are all set within the context of literary texts that interrogate and critique mesmerism's influence on the Victorians. This volume will be of interest, therefore, to scholars of Victorian literature and the history of science, as well as to those interested in cultural history with a focus on gender, sexuality, and sciences of the mind. Introduction / Martin Willis And Catherine Wynne -- Mind Reading : Literature In The Discourse Of Early Victorian Phrenology And Mesmerism / Ilana Kurshan -- Mesmerism And Medicine In Bulwer-lytton's Novels Of Occult / Gavin Budge -- Mesmerism And The Electric Age : From Poe To Edison / Anthony Enns -- Mesmeric Delusions : Mind And Mental Training In Elizabeth Gaskell's Writings / Louise Henson -- Mesmerism, Clairvoyance And Literary Culture In Mid-century Australia / Tiffany Donnelly -- Jim Crows, Veiled Ladies And True Womanhood : Mesmerism In The House Of The Seven Gables / Angelic Rodgers -- George Eliot's The Lifted Veil And The Cultural Politics Of Clairvoyance / Martin Willis -- Dazed And Abused : Gender And Mesmerism In Wilkie Collins / Sharrona Pearl -- Marie Corelli's Magnetic Revitalizing Power / Alisha Siebers -- Under The Influence : Crime And Hypnotic Fictions Of The Fin De Siècle / Mary Elizabeth Leighton -- Arthur Conan Doyle's Domestic Desires : Mesmerism, Mediumship And Femmes Fatales / Catherine Wynne. Edited By Martin Willis And Catherine Wynne. Includes Bibliographical References (p. [249]-265) And Index. Martin WILLIS and Catherine WYNNE: Introduction Ilana KURSHAN: Mind Reading: Literature in the Discourse of Early Victorian Phrenology and Mesmerism Gavin BUDGE: Mesmerism and Medicine in Bulwer-Lytton's Novels of the Occult Anthony ENNS: Mesmerism and the Electric Age: From Poe to Edison Louise HENSON: Mesmeric Delusions: Mind and Mental Training in Elizabeth Gaskell's Writings Tiffany DONNELLY: Mesmerism, Clairvoyance and Literary Culture in Mid-Century Australia Angelic RODGERS: Jim Crows, Veiled Ladies and True Womanhood: Mesmerism in The House of the Seven Gables Martin WILLIS: George Eliot's The Lifted Veil and the Cultural Politics of Clairvoyance Sharrona PEARL: Dazed and Abused: Gender and Mesmerism in Wilkie Collins Alisha SIEBERS: Marie Corelli's Magnetic Revitalizing Power Mary Elizabeth LEIGHTON: Under the Influence: Crime and Hypnotic Fictions of the Fin de Siecle Catherine WYNNE: Arthur Conan Doyle's Domestic Desires: Mesmerism, Mediumship and Femmes Fatales Notes on Contributors Bibliography Index Victorian Literary Mesmerism offers eleven interdisciplinary essays on the intersections between mesmerism and nineteenth-century literature. Its scope is complex and ambitious: ranging from considerations of the impact of literature on quasi-scientific writings of the early 1800s, to a study of Arthur Conan Doyle's use of ‘magnetic' ideas at the fin de siècle . The collection boldly leaps across generic, disciplinary, and cultural boundaries; essays on George Eliot and Elizabeth Gaskell sit snugly besides studies of Edgar Allan Poe and Wilkie Collins. Medicine, the law, spiritualism, physics, and literature are all discussed in light of their respective impact on Australian, British, and American history The phreno-mesmeric lecturer concluded his explanation of phrenology before a large audience packed tightly inside Victorian London's County Assembly Room.