Description
Oxford The Nervous Stage Nineteenthcentury Neuroscience and the Birth of Modern Theatre 2017 Edition by Matthew Wilson Smith
Nineteenth-century investigations into the nervous system
produced extraordinary discoveries that changed ways of thinking far beyond the
scientific community. Over the course of the century, scientists began to
conceive of the subject not principally as soul, mind, or even brain, but
instead as a complex of organically interacting mechanisms, many of them
operating more or less autonomously and unconsciously. Meanwhile, theatrical
works of the time by Shelley,Wagner, Dickens, Buchner, Zola, and Strindberg,
sought to play directly on the nerves of the spectators through
non-representational means, comprising a coherent genre Matthew Wilson Smith
has dubbed the "theaters of sensation." The Nervous Stage examines
the relations between theatrical practices and the scientific study of the
nervous system, arguing that to a significant degree, modern theater emerged
out of the interaction between these two apparently disparate fields. In six
chapters, The Nervous Stage makes three fundamental contributions to
scholarship on comparative literature, specifically in the areas of
drama/performance, cognitive literary studies, and the beginnings of global
modernism.Through a series of revisionist readings of specific theatrical works
and artists, Smith demonstrates that a number of literary texts were deeply
engaged in dialogue with the neurological sciences of their period, and that an
appreciation of this dialogue helps us better to understand their significance
for their ownhistorical period as well as for our own. Furthermore, it argues
that a number of lesser-known works-ranging from certain "closet
dramas" such as Shelley's The Cenci to popular melodramas such as Augustin
Daly's Under the Gaslight-had much greater cultural significance than has been
acknowledged heretofore.
Table of Contents: - Introduction Chapter
1: The Emptying of Gesture: Neurology and the British
Romantic Stage Chapter
2: From Gestures to Nerves: Woyzeck and the Barbel Fish Chapter
3: The Nervous System: Melodrama, Railway Trauma, and
Systemic Risk Chapter
4: The Inner Drama of
the Body: Wagner's Neural Aesthetics Chapter
5: Theatre's Revenge: Charcot and the Grand Guignol Chapter
6: The Prison-house of Nerves: Zola and Strindberg Conclusion