1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910822306403321

Autore

DeLong Anne

Titolo

Mesmerism, Medusa, and the muse : the romantic discourse of spontaneous creativity / / Anne DeLong

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Lanham, Maryland : , : Lexington Books, , 2012

©2012

ISBN

0-7391-7044-9

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (179 p.)

Disciplina

820.9/353

Soggetti

English literature - 19th century - History and criticism

Mesmerism in literature

Medusa (Greek mythology) in literature

Creation (Literary, artistic, etc.)

Romanticism - Great Britain

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Description based upon print version of record.

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Nota di contenuto

MESMERISM, MEDUSA, AND THE MUSE; Contents; Acknowledgments; Introduction Opium Dreams: Romantic Poetry and Spontaneous Creativity; Chapter One Romantic Improvisation: The Discourse of Spontaneity and the Anxiety of Inspiration; Chapter Two Animal Magnetism: Mesmerism in the Shelley Circle; Chapter Three Mesmeric Muses: Galvanic Maniacs and Somnambulant Zombies; Chapter Four The Medusan Muse: Speaking Eyes and Snaking Veins; Chapter Five The Gazing Eye, the Speaking I, and the Assenting Ay; Bibliography; Index; About the Author

Sommario/riassunto

Mesmerism, Medusa, and the Muse: The Romantic Discourse of Spontaneous Creativity explores the connections among the Romantic discourse of spontaneous literary creativity, the nineteenth-century cultural practice of mesmerism, and the mythical Medusa. This analysis of Medusan mesmerism in the works of Mary Robinson, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Mary Shelley, and Letitia Elizabeth Landon (L.E.L.) contributes to recent scholarship about improvisational poetics, the subversive potential of mesmerism, and Medusa as a fem