Poe and Mesmerism

PMLA ◽  
1947 ◽  
Vol 62 (4) ◽  
pp. 1077-1094
Author(s):  
Sidney E. Lind
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Edgar Allan Poe ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Animal Magnetism ◽  
The Difference ◽  
Psychoanalytic Theories

In three of his stories, “A Tale of the Ragged Mountains,” “Mesmeric Revelation,” and “The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar,” Edgar Allan Poe reflected the interest of his day in what was by all odds the most fascinating of the new “sciences.” Mesmerism, first as a somewhat frightening novelty in the hands of its “discoverer,” Anton Mesmer, during the closing decades of the eighteenth century, and then as the handmaiden of medicine in the first half of the nineteenth century, had achieved enormous popularity throughout Europe and the United States.1 To compare such popularity with the spread of the psychoanalytic theories of Freud, Jung, and Adler in the twentieth century is to make but a feeble analogy, considering the difference in time and the development of science between the two ages. In addition, the interest manifested in mesmerism contained far more sensationalism and mysticism, and therefore had a more direct and widespread appeal. The extent of interest becomes clear when it is realized that in 1815 a commission was appointed in Russia to investigate animal magnetism, with a “magnetical” clinic being subsequently established near Moscow; that by 1817 doctors in Prussia and in Denmark were the only ones authorized to practice mesmerism, and were compelled to submit their findings to royal commissions; and that by 1835 a clinic had been established in Holland, and in Sweden theses on the subject were accepted for the doctorate.2

‘Religious America, Secular Europe’

2017 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
The United States ◽  
European Countries ◽  
Northern Europe ◽  
Special Focus ◽  
Early Twenty ◽  
The Usa

This chapter offers an overview of the religious trajectories of the United States and of the countries in Western and Northern Europe from the later eighteenth century to the early twenty-first. There is special focus on changes in the years around 1800, those around 1900, and in the later twentieth century. In the nineteenth century the USA was moving in very different directions from many of the countries of continental Europe, but American pluralism was paralleled by that of Britain. From about 1890, Britain and the USA began to move apart. Secularizing trends were common to both countries, but the countervailing factors were much stronger in the USA. Meanwhile, many other European countries were differently religious from the USA, but not necessarily less religious. Only in the 1970s can we begin to speak of a clear divide between a more ‘religious’ America and a more ‘secular Europe’.

scholarly journals Evangelicalism and Secularization in Britain and America from the Eighteenth Century to the Present

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Bebbington
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Core ◽  
Two Sides

Evangelicalism, the most salient form of religion in Britain and America by the mid-nineteenth century, formed the core of what was undermined by secularization over subsequent years. Did the characteristics of evangelicalism on the two sides of the Atlantic contribute to the different degrees of disenchantment with religion in the two countries? It is argued that the evangelical movements in the United States and Britain were still much the same during the period to around the opening of the twentieth century. But from that point onwards divergence set in, so that evangelicalism in America became more successful in capturing the allegiance of the public. The British version of evangelicalism that was undermined by secularization was a much feebler force during the twentieth century. Hence, it is not surprising that the secular made much greater strides in Britain than in America.

Ballet and Popular Culture in America

Ballet Class ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 277-304
Author(s):  
Melissa R. Klapper
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Popular Culture ◽  
The United States ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
American Popular Culture ◽  
Cultural Spaces ◽  
The Subject

Ballet’s popularity as entertainment has grown steadily in the United States since the early nineteenth century, and it has appeared in a wide variety of cultural spaces. Three arenas of American popular culture where ballet has consistently been important are movies, television, and the ubiquitous holiday performances of The Nutcracker. Dance was the subject of some of the earliest movies ever filmed and has remained a frequent theme. Millions of Americans have seen ballet on television, and as many have also seen performances of The Nutcracker. Over the course of the twentieth century many Americans have been inspired to take ballet classes or send their children to ballet classes as a result of their engagement with ballet in popular culture.

Histories of the Modern Prison

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Meranze
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
The United States ◽  
Local Response ◽  
Global Expansion ◽  
History Of ◽  
Racial Domination ◽  
Multiple Uses

This essay examines the history of the prison since late the eighteenth century. Following a discussion of the origins of the reformative prison, the essay analyzes its global expansion as a tool for disciplining populations, expanding imperial control, and establishing national legitimacy. In particular, it emphasizes the dialectic between colonial and national projects and the multiple uses that the prison has come to play in states around the globe. From its origins as a local response to particular issues of crime and disruption, during the nineteenth century the prison became a sign of modernity itself. Its twentieth-century history, in the United States and across the globe, only tightened its relationship with systems of racial domination and the continuing legacy of colonial violence. The prison now marks the collapse of Enlightenment hopes for a more humane system of punishment.

Historical Fragments’ Mobile Echo

Transfers ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 115-119 ◽  
Author(s):  
Susan E. Bell ◽  
Kathy Davis
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Cultural Revolution ◽  
Ming Dynasty ◽  
Third Century ◽  
Refugee Crisis ◽  
The Third ◽  
Opium War ◽  
The Subject

Translocation – Transformation is an ambitious contribution to the subject of mobility. Materially, it interlinks seemingly disparate objects into a surprisingly unified exhibition on mobile histories and heritages: twelve bronze zodiac heads, silk and bamboo creatures, worn life vests, pressed Pu-erh tea, thousands of broken antique teapot spouts, and an ancestral wooden temple from the Ming dynasty (1368–1644) used by a tea-trading family. Historically and politically, the exhibition engages Chinese stories from the third century BCE, empires in eighteenth-century Austria and China, the Second Opium War in the nineteenth century, the Chinese Cultural Revolution of the mid-twentieth century, and today’s global refugee crisis.

American Legal Thought in Transatlantic Context, 1870-1914

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
David M. Rabban
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
First Generation ◽  
The United States ◽  
Recent Book ◽  
Historical School ◽  
Legal Thought ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
Sociological Jurisprudence

Most American legal scholars have described their nineteenth-century predecessors as deductive formalists. In my recent book, Law’s History : American Legal Thought and the Transatlantic Turn to History, I demonstrate instead that the first generation of professional legal scholars in the United States, who wrote during the last three decades of the nineteenth century, viewed law as a historically based inductive science. They constituted a distinctive historical school of American jurisprudence that was superseded by the development of sociological jurisprudence in the early twentieth century. This article focuses on the transatlantic context, involving connections between European and American scholars, in which the historical school of American jurisprudence emerged, flourished, and eventually declined.

Two Models of Public Opinion: Bacon's ‘New Logic’ and Diotima's ‘Tale of Love’ (The Prothero Lecture)

1974 ◽  
Vol 24 ◽  
pp. 79-96
Author(s):  
Samuel H. Beer
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Public Policy ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Public Opinion ◽  
Theoretical Approach ◽  
Democratic Theory ◽  
The United States ◽  
Representative Government ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Work Done

It is appropriate that an American should address himself to the subject of public opinion. For, in terms of quantity, Americans have made the subject peculiarly their own. They have also invested it with characteristically American concerns. Most of the work done on the subject in the United States is oriented by a certain theoretical approach. This approach is democratic and rationalist. Both aspects create problems. In this paper I wish to play down the democratic problem, viz., how many of the voters are capable of thinking sensibly about public policy, and emphasize rather the difficulties that arise from modern rationalism. Here I take a different tack from most historians of the concept of public opinion, who, taking note of the origin of the term in the mid-eighteenth century, stress its connection with the rise of representative government and democratic theory.

The American Reception of Hegel (1830–1930)

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Kaag ◽  
Kipton E. Jensen
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
The United States ◽  
American Pragmatism ◽  
Human Effects ◽  
The Impact

This chapter outlines the reception of Hegel in the United States in the nineteenth and the first half of the twentieth century. Hegel dramatically influenced the formation of American transcendentalism and American pragmatism, despite often being described as simply antithetical to these American philosophies. While pragmatists such as Peirce and James often criticized a certain interoperation of Hegel, their readings of the Phenomenology and Logic helped them articulate a philosophy, inherited from Emerson, that was geared toward experience and to exploring the practical, deeply human, effects of philosophy. Care is taken to describe the impact that the study of Hegel had on American institutions of culture and politics in the nineteenth century.

The Movement

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aryeh Neier
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Human Rights ◽  
Driving Force ◽  
The United States ◽  
Feminist Movement ◽  
Human Rights Movement ◽  
Protection Of Human Rights ◽  
National Boundaries

This chapter explains that the driving force behind the protection of human rights worldwide, today and for roughly the past thirty-five years, has been the nongovernmental human rights movement. Intermittently during the last two-and-a-half centuries, citizens' movements did play important roles in efforts to promote human rights, as during the development of the antislavery movement in England in the eighteenth century and the rise of the feminist movement in the United States in the nineteenth century. The contemporary human rights movement responds to victories and defeats by shifting focus from time to time, but it shows signs that it will remain an enduring force in world affairs. Efforts by those outside governments have been particularly important in extending the protection of rights beyond national boundaries, and it is in the present era that they have been most significant.

Shund and the Tabloids: Jewish Popular Reading in Inter-War Poland

2003 ◽  
pp. 188-212
Author(s):  
Nathan Cohen
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
The United States ◽  
The West ◽  
Tabloid Press

This chapter describes Jewish popular reading in inter-war Poland, looking at shund and the Polish tabloid press. In the first third of the twentieth century, as the Polish press was developing rapidly, sensationalist newspapers began to proliferate. While this type of press had been widespread in the United States and western Europe since the middle of the nineteenth century, it first emerged in Poland only in 1910, with Ilustrowany Kurier Codzienny (Illustrated Daily Courier) in Kraków. In Warsaw, the first tabloid newspapers, Kurier Informacyjny i Telegraficzny (Information and Telegraphic Courier) and Ekspres Poranny (Morning Express), appeared in 1922. In 1926, Kurier Informacyjny i Telegraficzny changed its name, now printed in red, to Kurier Czerwony (Red Courier). In time, the colour red became emblematic of sensationalist newspapers in Poland, and they were nicknamed czerwoniaki (Reds), similar to the ‘yellow’ press in the West.

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