Minds, Bodies, Machines, 1770-1930

by D. Coleman (Editor), H. Fraser (Editor)

Overview

It is during the nineteenth-century, the age of machinery, that we begin to witness a sustained exploration of the literal and discursive entanglements of minds, bodies, machines. This book explores the impact of technology upon conceptions of language, consciousness, human cognition, and the boundaries between materialist and esoteric sciences.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780230284678
Publisher:	Palgrave Macmillan UK
Publication date:	04/12/2011
Series:	Palgrave Studies in Nineteenth-Century Writing and Culture
Edition description:	2011
Pages:	230
Product dimensions:	5.60(w) x 8.60(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

MARIE BANFIELD PhD student at Birkbeck College, University of London, UK DANIEL BROWN Professor in English, University of Western Australia STEVEN CONNOR Professor of Modern Literature and Theory, Birkbeck College, University of London, UK PAUL CROSTHWAITE Lecturer in English Literature, Cardiff University, UK KATHERINE INGLIS received her PhD in 2009 from Birkbeck, University of London, UK IAIN MCCALMAN Research Professor, University of Sydney, Australia JAMES MUSSELL Lecturer in English, University of Birmingham, UK PETER OTTO Professor of English Literary Studies, University of Melbourne, Australia LAURA SALISBURY RCUK Fellow in Science, Technology and Culture, Birkbeck, University of London, UK

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations Acknowledgements Notes on Contributors Introduction - Minds, Bodies, Machines; D.Coleman & H.Fraser Inside the Imagination-Machines of Gothic Fiction: Estrangement, Transport, Affect; P.Otto   Air-Looms and Influencing Machines; S.Connor Maternity, Madness and Mechanization: The Ghastly Automaton in James Hogg's The Three Perils of Woman; K.Inglis Clockwork Automata, Artificial Intelligence, and Why the Body of the Author Matters; P.Crosthwaite Metaphors and Analogies of Mind and Body in Nineteenth-Century Science and Fiction: George Eliot, Henry James and George Meredith; M.Banfield Alfred Wallace's Conversion: Plebian Radicalism and the Spiritual Evolution of the Mind; I.McCalman Molecular Machines and Lascivious Bodies: James Clerk Maxwell's Verse-Born Attacks on Tyndallic Reductionism; D.Brown Writing the 'Great Proteus of Disease': Influenza, Informatics, and the Body in the Late Nineteenth Century; J.Mussell Linguistic Trepanation: Brain Damage, Penetrative Seeing, and a Revolution of the Word; L.Salisbury Coda Notes Index

Editorial Reviews

'Overall, this is a rewarding and well-assembled collection, required reading for anyone interested in the history of medicine and science as it relates to the history of literature. It suggests a community of scholars - mostly British and Australian, with a few North Americans - committed to an analysis of literature that foregrounds its relation to both embodiment and science.' - Tim Armstrong, New Books on Literature 19

From the Publisher