All in the Mind: Fin de Siècle Psychological Vampire Fiction, Powers of Mind Control and Mesmerism

2014 ◽  
pp. 97-107
Keyword(s):  
Fin De Siecle ◽  
Mind Control ◽  
Fin De Siècle ◽  
The Mind

Mind, Body and Embarrassment in Henry James’s The Awkward Age

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Attridge
Keyword(s):  
William James ◽  
Fin De Siecle ◽  
Mental Life ◽  
Expressive Vocabulary ◽  
Fin De Siècle ◽  
Mind And Body ◽  
Public Behavior ◽  
Modernist Novel ◽  
The Mind

This chapter considers James’s The Awkward Age (1899) in the context of fin de siècle mental science and its preoccupation, most evident in theories of emotion, with the materiality of the mind. Contributing to recent accounts that challenge the commonplace equation between psychological depth and James’s transition to modernist novel, the chapter argues that The Awkward Age represents mental life – and in particular awkwardness – as public behavior rather than introspection, self-presence and interiority. In a similar fashion to late-Victorian mental scientists (including his brother, William), James was concerned with finding a vocabulary for representing mental life in physical terms, demonstrating the interrelation of mind and body. James’s use of a behavioural rather than expressive vocabulary for embarrassment determines the shape of the novel’s plot and forms part of its critique of a Victorian prudery that presupposes a mind-matter separation.

The synthesis of consciousness and the latent life of the mind: Philosophy, psychopathology, and ‘cryptopsychism’ in fin-de-siècle France

2020 ◽  
pp. 095269512092602
Author(s):  
Pietro Terzi
Keyword(s):  
Experimental Psychology ◽  
Scientific Inquiry ◽  
Fin De Siecle ◽  
Human Sciences ◽  
Philosophical Psychology ◽  
Complex Process ◽  
Rational Explanation ◽  
Fin De Siècle ◽  
Life Of The Mind ◽  
The Mind

In fin-de-siècle France, we witness a strange circulation of concepts between philosophy, theoretical and experimental psychology, and the borderline realm of what we would now call meta- or parapsychology. This was a time characterized by a complex process of redefinition of the disciplinary frontiers between philosophy and psychology, which favoured the birth of hybrid conceptualities and stark oppositions as well. Furthermore, the great scientific advances in physics, physiology, and psychology fostered hope for a full rational explanation of reality, even of its most unfathomable layers and seemingly bizarre phenomena. Focusing on the case of Émile Boirac’s research on what he termed ‘cryptopsychism’, notably in his book Our Hidden Forces, this article aims to show how Kantian notions and models of consciousness belonging to the canon of French spiritualist philosophical psychology were taken up by scientists such as Pierre Janet and ended up being assimilated and discussed in the more obscure and precarious realm of scientific inquiry into metapsychical phenomena. Far from being a mere historical curiosity, this quest for a scientific account of the latent and subconscious life of the mind sheds light on the intricate relationship between philosophy and the human sciences between the 19th and 20th centuries.

Signs of Crisis, Fin-de-Siècle Doldrums, of Middle Age?

1994 ◽  
Vol 46 ◽  
pp. 37-44
Author(s):  
Geoffrey Field
Keyword(s):  
Energy Level ◽  
French Revolution ◽  
Middle Age ◽  
Labor History ◽  
The State ◽  
Fin De Siecle ◽  
Basic Form ◽  
Fin De Siècle ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Better Than

The New Labor History has, unexpectedly but inevitably, become middleaged. The mirror shows the same basic form, though more capacious and less taut than before. But the energy level is definitely lower; some of the enthusiasm is gone; newer, younger groups on the street have more “élan and purpose,” and are more fired up and politically engaged. There's pride in past achievements, of course, and plenty of consolation that the stuff now being turned out is better than ever.But the air contains a whiff of panic, an infectious sense that the best days are gone. Even the “oldfashioned” history, once so disdained, now seems to have redeeming points. Like Lord Melbourne in his dotage, labor historians wish they could be as sure of anything as they once were of everything. Marxism down the tubes, class stripped of its explanatory force, Lefebvre's French Revolution gathering dust, E. P. Thompson under attack. Where will it all end? Some blame an excess of theory for making the mind spin and the stomach queasy; they prescribe a strong dose of exercise in the archives. Others have begun to pin their hopes on the state or counsel premature retreat into institutions.

Places of Form in Early Modern Poetics

2021 ◽  
pp. 112-124
Author(s):  
Michael Hetherington
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Literary Criticism ◽  
English Literature ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Fin De Siecle ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
Fin De Siècle ◽  
The Mind

‘Form’ is a notoriously capacious, unreliable, and yet necessary commonplace of both modern and early modern critical vocabulary. This essay explores the flexible and imaginatively generative ways in which the concept migrated from discourses of philosophy and logic into literary criticism and practice, drawing on a range of writers of different nationalities from across the early modern period, but focusing especially on English literature of the Elizabethan fin-de-siècle. It argues, in particular, that one of form’s principal places in that exciting cultural moment was the mind of the poet: the mind trained, structured, or ‘informed’ by poetic theory; the mind as a place which moulds and shapes the materials of language and representation into communicative forms; the mind as the source for the forms of utterance we call ‘style’.

Illustrated Media, the Built Environment and Identity Politics in Fin-de-siècle Catalonia: Printing Images, Making the Nation

2015 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 113-135
Author(s):  
Lucila Mallart
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Built Environment ◽  
Identity Politics ◽  
Nation Building ◽  
Constitutive Relationship ◽  
Fin De Siecle ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Fin De Siècle ◽  
Late Nineteenth

This article explores the role of visuality in the identity politics of fin-de-siècle Catalonia. It engages with the recent reevaluation of the visual, both as a source for the history of modern nation-building, and as a constitutive element in the emergence of civic identities in the liberal urban environment. In doing so, it offers a reading of the mutually constitutive relationship of the built environment and the print media in late-nineteenth century Catalonia, and explores the role of this relation as the mechanism by which the so-called ‘imagined communities’ come to exist. Engaging with debates on urban planning and educational policies, it challenges established views on the interplay between tradition and modernity in modern nation-building, and reveals long-term connections between late-nineteenth-century imaginaries and early-twentieth-century beliefs and practices.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document