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OverviewIn the nineteenth century, American and British culture experienced an explosion of interest in writings about the brain. The years between 1800 and 1880 are often described as the emergence of modern neuroscience, with new areas of the brain being discovered and named. Naming was quickly followed by a drive to hypothesize functioning, a process that suggested thinking itself may be a mere physiological act. In Writing the Brain, Stefan Schöberlein tracks how literature encountered such novel, scientific theories of cognition-and how it, in turn, shaped scientific thinking. Before the era of modern psychology, a heterogeneous group of alienists, self-help gurus, and anatomists proposed that the structure of the brain could be used to explain how the mind worked. Suddenly, nineteenth-century readers and writers had to contend with the idea that qualities once ascribed to disembodied souls may arise from a mere lump of cranial matter. In a period when scientists and literary writers frequently published in the same periodicals, the ensuing debate over the material mind was a public one. Writing the Brain demonstrates, by examining several canonical works and textual rediscoveries, that these exchanges not only influenced how poets and novelists fictionalized the mind but also how scientists thought and talked about their discoveries. From George Combe to Charles Dickens, from Emily Dickinson to Pliny Earle, from Benjamin Rush to Alfred Tennyson, 1800s debated what it means to have or, rather, be a brain. Full Product DetailsAuthor: Stefan Schöberlein (Assistant Professor of English, Assistant Professor of English, Texas A&M University at Central Texas)Publisher: Oxford University Press Inc Imprint: Oxford University Press Inc Dimensions: Width: 22.90cm , Height: 3.60cm , Length: 16.00cm Weight: 0.544kg ISBN: 9780197693681ISBN 10: 0197693687 Pages: 280 Publication Date: 07 November 2023 Audience: Professional and scholarly , Professional & Vocational Format: Hardback Publisher's Status: Active Availability: To order  Stock availability from the supplier is unknown. We will order it for you and ship this item to you once it is received by us. Table of ContentsAcknowledgements The First Century of the Brain: An Introduction Chapter 1. Nature's Mind and Mind's Nature: Romantic Cognition Between Harp and Atom Harp-Strings Mind-Strings Mind-Matter Mind-Atoms Chapter 2. Split Brains, Doubled Minds: The Gothic's Bicameral Vision The Sleepers Dialoging the Self Hemispheric Voices Master-Minds Chapter 3: Skulls and Society: Reading the Mind as a Multi-Organ Entity Brain-Damage Phrenology as Sociology Phrenological Victorianism Phrenological Americanism Phrenology's Real Chapter 4: Cranial Reconstruction: Racialized Brains and the Psychometric Real Uncommon Minds Great Brains A Cranial Case Study Realism as Psychometry Chapter 5: Rattle-Brained: Insanity as Material Metacognition You, Me, Brain Metempsychosis as Metacognition Insanity as Pop Culture Psychosis as Metacognition Chapter 6: The Telegraphed Brain: Wires as Proto-Neurons Thoughts on Wires Telegraphed Minds Introspective Brain-Machines Afterword References IndexReviewsWriting the Brain is an outstanding contribution to the growing body of work on nineteenth-century brain science and literature. The author brings extensive knowledge of Anglophone and European neurology to bear on canonical works like Wuthering Heights, Leaves of Grass, and the poems of Emily Dickinson, producing compelling original readings. Schöberlein's adept use of anecdote and illustration makes this a particularly accessible resource that is well-suited for the classroom. * Anne Stiles, St Louis University * The brain contains multitudes. This revisionist and often surprising book rewrites that organ, fighting against forgetting. Our worries about neuropharmaceuticals and machine learning have a long pre-history. The brain as a cybernetic network of matter and metaphors, protoplasm and electricity, was born around 1800 and nineteenth-century explorations of the material mind glisten here with fresh relevance. As a literary and cultural historian, Stefan Schöberlein is both truffle-hunter and landscape painter. He has a knack for finding things on both sides of the Atlantic no one has read in a centuryâto rediscover authors we never stopped reading...Writing the Brain orchestrates a scintillating call-and-response between literature and science. Farewell to the two cultures. The brain is their meeting-point. * John Durham Peters, Yale University * Author InformationStefan Schöberlein is Assistant Professor of English at Texas A&M University-Central Texas. He has edited Walt Whitman's New Orleans, co-edited the Oxford Handbook of Walt Whitman, and published literary translations into German. He has served as president of the Digital Americanists Society and is currently a contributing editor of the Walt Whitman Archive. Tab Content 6Author Website:Countries AvailableAll regions |
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