Professors, Charlatans, and Spiritists: The Stage Hypnotist in Late Nineteenth-Century English Literature

2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 007
Author(s):  
Juan Marcos Bonet Safont
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Social Context ◽  
Henry James ◽  
English Literature ◽  
Literary Text ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Love Story ◽  
Form Part ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
Essential Contribution

In this paper I will explore the stereotype of the stage hypnotist in fiction literature through the analysis of the novellas Professor Fargo (1874) by Henry James (1843-1916) and Drink: A Love Story on a Great Question (1890) by Hall Caine (1853-1931). Both Professor Fargo and Drink form part of a literary subgenre referred to variously as “Hypnotic Fiction”, “Trance Gothic” or “mesmeric texts”. The objective of my research, which examines both the literary text itself and its historical and social context, is to offer new and interesting data that may contribute to the development of a poetics or theory of the literary subgenre of hypnotic fiction. In this sense, this article is an essential contribution to a broader analysis that I have been working on, focusing on highlighting the generic features of this type of literature by analysing the stereotypes of hypnotists in fiction.

scholarly journals Hearing through the théâtrophone: Sonically constructed spaces and embodied listening in the late nineteenth-century French theatre

2016 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 73-90 ◽  
Author(s):  
Melissa Van Drie
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Social Context ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Teenth Century ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
French Theatre ◽  
Subscription Service ◽  
Theoretical Reflection ◽  
A Performance

This article presents a historical and theoretical reflection of the théâtrophone, a late nine- teenth-century telephone broadcast service that allowed users at a distance to listen in live to local theatre performances (spoken theatre, opera and musical concerts). Often cited as the first binaural experience in 1881, the théâtrophone’s much longer history as a subscription service, which operated in Paris from 1889 through the mid-1930s, is relatively unknown. This article considers what hearing through a théâtrophone meant to nineteenth- and twentieth- century users beyond its initial 1881 prototype. To hear through the théâtrophone means adopting a methodology mirroring the artefact itself: moving between social, professional, artistic, sensory registers. In doing so, the ways in which the théâtrophone was attuned to dis- course and practice emerge, as do more subtle processes involved in new nineteenth-century constructs of hearing and listening. Precisely the théâtrophone’s development is examined in relation to its particular social context: its installation on the spectacular Parisian boulevards and its relation to fin de siècle theatre culture. The article first investigates how theatrophonic listening was accorded to existent practices of theatre-going. Second, the article explores the more radical propositions of the théâtrophone in relation to important aesthetic and prac- tical changes occurring simultaneously in theatre culture. The théâtrophone’s virtual sonic experience multiplied the forms of a performance and its modalities of creation and recep- tion. Through accounts of ‘listening in’ the aspects of the new sonically constructed space are described, as are postures of early mediatised listening. The article posits that new modalities of listening are articulated through the théâtrophone, with certain users, including Proust, defining it as a monitoring and creative tool. In this capacity, ‘theatrophonic’ listening contrib- uted to the development of a refined ear, capable of detecting sonic nuance, which was central to artistic sensibilities at the time. 

scholarly journals Tsubouchi, Dryden and Global Shakespeare

2012 ◽  
pp. 81
Author(s):  
Daniel Gallimore
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
English Literature ◽  
John Dryden ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
English Renaissance ◽  
Critical Perspective ◽  
Antony And Cleopatra ◽  
History Of ◽  
Universal Values ◽  
Late Nineteenth

What does it mean for Shakespeare’s plays to be recognized as both ‘universal’ and ‘foreign’ in a recipient culture? In the case of Japan, where Shakespeare was initially received in the late nineteenth century, one answer might be that Japanese Shakespeareans have adopted a kind of ‘soft humanism’; in other words one not specifically situated against the horizon of the English Renaissance, but instead fulfilling a range of purposes within the local culture, not least the touting of ‘universal’ values. Universals appeal to societies perceived to lack a strong awareness of the individuated self, such as in late nineteenth century Japan, where the pioneering Shakespeare translator Tsubouchi Shōyō was among the first to encounter Shakespeare’s works. One influence on Tsubouchi’s translating style that is often overlooked is that of John Dryden, who becomes a central figure in the history of English literature which Tsubouchi published in 1901. Like Dryden, Tsubouchi finds in Shakespeare a forum for philosophical and ideological exchange; Dryden may well have provided Tsubouchi with a critical perspective on their predecessor. This article discusses their relationship with regard to Dryden’s influential adaptation of Antony and Cleopatra, All for Love (1678), and Tsubouchi’s 1915 translation of the same play.

A law unto herself: the solitary odyssey of M. E. Harkness

2019 ◽  
pp. 17-38
Author(s):  
Terry Elkiss
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Active Engagement ◽  
Life Narrative ◽  
Political Work ◽  
New Information ◽  
The World ◽  
Form Part ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
Social Reformers

This biographical chapter presents new information about Harkness’s eventful life. In spite of her active engagement with many of the leading writers, radicals, and social reformers in late nineteenth-century London, as well as her own political work and literary labour and extensive travels, relatively little is known about Margaret Elise Harkness. Four continents form part of her life narrative, which is only now beginning to reveal a more nuanced picture of her activities, associations, and accomplishments than was previously presumed. The consideration of newly uncovered materials on her is an exploration that extends beyond ‘darkest Londonʼ and suggests that there are additional relevant details that should be attached to her resume. Libraries and archives around the world possess key documents to enlighten her ideas pursuits, but there are also other unexpected settings and sources for a preliminary biographical investigation of the woman who was more than the author designated as John Law.

Vernon Lee’s Hideous Roman à Clef

Genre ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 52 (2) ◽  
pp. 127-149
Author(s):  
Matthew John Phillips
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Henry James ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
The Novel ◽  
History Of The Novel ◽  
Vernon Lee ◽  
External Context ◽  
Critical Practices ◽  
History Of ◽  
Late Nineteenth

Following Henry James, literary-critical practices presume the autonomy and integrity of the literary text. The roman à clef meanwhile troubles this autonomy by presuming a transparent and concrete relation between text and world. By turning to the late nineteenth-century writer Vernon Lee, who elevates reference as a vital principle of all literary representation, this essay argues that the roman à clef challenges our assumptions about the value of reference. Lee’s novel Miss Brown (1884), a roman à clef about British aestheticism, is treated as a privileged case study for reading this alternative history of the novel. By focusing on the provisionality of literature, which Lee calls a “half-art,” this essay argues that literature’s reference to an external context provides a point of departure for thinking about women’s disempowerment and vulnerability in late nineteenth-century British culture. At the same time, it argues that provisionality offers a model for considering the broader consequences of limitation and determination in the history of the novel.

The Organisation of Literary Knowledge: The Study of English in the Late Nineteenth Century

2005 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carol Atherton
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
English Literature ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Academic Subject ◽  
King's College ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Late Nineteenth

This chapter discusses the emergence of English as an academic subject in the nineteenth century. It demonstrates how the early degree courses in English literature at a number of English universities were characterised by attempts to make the subject fulfil the disciplinary criteria that it should be rigorous, teachable and objective. It also analyses the series of debates that surrounded the teaching of English literature at Oxford, King’s College in London and Owens College in Manchester.

Authorship, Inscription, and ‘The Great American Interviewer’

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rebecca Roach
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Henry James ◽  
William Dean Howells ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Information Communication ◽  
Public And Private ◽  
Late Nineteenth

This chapter begins in the late nineteenth century and argues that the interviewer becomes a powerful foil for realist writers in this era of celebrity. The new figure of the interviewer raised difficult questions around processes of inscription, both mechanical and aesthetic, provoking anxieties around boundaries between public and private, bodies and machines, and about the credibility and authority of information communication via these networks. Drawing on the writings of Henry James and William Dean Howells, amongst others, this chapter demonstrates that the interviewer becomes bound up with debates about the limitations of the realist project and also comes to represent the excesses of optical scrutiny to which the realist author does not succumb. For Henry James in particular, interviewing becomes a crucial site for him to reflect on the embodied nature of communication in general.

Howells's Obscure Hurt

1975 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 199-211
Author(s):  
John W. Crowley
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Civil War ◽  
Henry James ◽  
Literary History ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Great War ◽  
Henry Adams ◽  
American Literary History ◽  
Late Nineteenth

‘ Every loyal American who went abroad during the first years of our great war felt bound to make himself some excuse for turning his back on his country in the hour of her trouble ’, wrote W. D. Howells in 1881. It is a striking coincidence in American literary history that four major writers of the late nineteenth century – Howells, Henry James, S. L. Clemens, and Henry Adams – all failed to serve in the Civil War. Whether or not they believed that they had turned their backs on their country, each made some excuse in his published work. The most notorious is Henry James's statement in Notes of a Son and Brother that ‘ a horrid even if an obscure hurt ’ had prevented him from volunteering to fight.

Invalid Modernism

2019 ◽  
pp. 26-45
Author(s):  
Michael Davidson
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Virginia Woolf ◽  
Henry James ◽  
Ezra Pound ◽  
The Body ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Art And Literature ◽  
Victorian Period ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
The Aesthetic

The opening chapter discusses representations of the aesthete and convalescent as seminal figures in the late nineteenth-century formation of modernist art and literature. Unlike the more fashionable treatment of disease in the Victorian period, embodied often in the figure of the female invalid, modernist representations of disease or illness were more likely to be considered pathological, subject to increasing medicalization, diagnosis, and incarceration. The figures of the male aesthete and convalescent offer a more transgressive model to ideals of health and improvement by which modernity is measured. This figure was, not insignificantly, formative in the appearance of the sexual other or “invert” in sexological research. By looking at several writers—Friedrich Nietzsche, John Addington Symonds, Henry James, Virginia Woolf, Ezra Pound, and T. S. Eliot—this opening chapter seeks a correlation between the aesthetic and the body, between autonomy and contagion.

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