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.

Victorian Literary Mesmerism (Costerus NS 160) PDF

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