This anthology of primary materials will help redraw our understanding of the complexity and range of Victorian psychological thought. Areas covered include: phrenology and mesmerism; theories of dreams, memory, and the unconscious; female and masculine sexuality; insanity and nervous disorders; and theories of degeneration. Texts have been chosen from a wide variety of scientific, medical, and cultural sources to illustrate the social range of these debates. Embodied Selves will be of interest to both specialist and non-specialist audiences in the areas of cultural, literary, historical, and...

This volume explores the cultural importance of concepts and theories of memory. Ranging historically from the French Revolution to the beginnings of Modernism, it examines the importance of memory in cultural history.

This study challenges the traditional tendency to regard Charlotte Bronte as having existed in a historical vacuum, by setting her work firmly within the context of Victorian psychological debate. Based on considerable local research, using texts ranging from local newspaper copy to the medical tomes in the Reverend Patrick Bronte's library, the author explores the interpenetration of economic, social and psychological discourse in the early and mid 19th-century, and traces the ways in which Charlotte Bronte's texts operate in relation to this complex, often contradictory, discursive...

Charlotte Bront 's fiction is examined in the context of Victorian constructions of psychology, sexuality, and insanity.

Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre is one of the most famous novels in the world; its heroine's spirited response to hardship and temptation has engaged an eager readership since its publication in 1847. Jane Eyre, however, was not Charlotte Bronte's only novel, and Patsy Stoneman's book traces the development of her work from her exuberant early writing to her disturbing last work, Villette. A final chapter considers Charlotte Bronte's shifting popular and academic reputation and the various adaptations and imitations of her work. Reading the novels in the context of Charlotte Bronte's life and...

This study explores the ways in which George Eliot's involvement with contemporary scientific theory affected the evolution of her fiction.

Ranging historically from the French Revolution to the beginnings of Modernism, this book examines the significance of memory in an era of furious social change. Through an examination of literature, history and science the authors explore the theme of memory as a tool of social progression. This book offers a fresh theoretical understanding of the period and a wealth of empirical material of use to the historian, literature student or social psychologist.