| Summary: | <!-- /* Style Definitions */ p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal {mso-style-parent:""; margin:0cm; margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman";} @page Section1 {size:612.0pt 792.0pt; margin:72.0pt 90.0pt 72.0pt 90.0pt; mso-header-margin:36.0pt; mso-footer-margin:36.0pt; mso-paper-source:0;} div.Section1 {page:Section1;} --><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: ">Dickens’s experiments with mesmerism belonged to a period in which the scientific understanding of the phenomena by experimental investigators began to diffuse into popular forms. <span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: ">Even though explanation and knowledge gradually clustered on the side of professional and elite science, and pure performance became more characteristic of popular expositions and demonstrations of mesmerism, explanation and performance remained closely and intricately intertwined. </span></span> <span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: "><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: ">It would be tempting to contend that Dickens asserted and enoyed a comic self-distancing from the often frankly absurd theatrical mechanics of mesmerism. But, this article argues, Dickens was at times at least partly under, as well as beyond reach of the influence. </span></span><!--[if gte mso 10]> <mce:style><! /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language:#0400; mso-fareast-language:#0400; mso-bidi-language:#0400;} > <! [endif] ><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: " mce_style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: ">There were two conjoined issues of power involved in mesmerism. The first was the power exercised over particular subjects in mesmeric relations. The other is a more general effort to establish and maintain power over the mesmeric phenomenon itself. Spiritual-religious and scientific-materialist explanations offered very different understandings, but they both constituted an effort to stabilise and regularise a set of phenomena that otherwise threatened to radiate unpredictably in all directions. This involves a complex play between explanation and performance. Both forms of explanation attempted to stabilise and simplify relations that the various ways in which mesmerism was performed and enacted tended in fact to multiply and complicate. This article reads Dickens's own involvement in this dynamic, principally through his mesmerism of Madame Augusta de la Rue, both exercising power through mesmerism, and attempting to secure power over it. </sp >< >< ><-->
|
|---|
