Thomas De Quincey and the Cognitive Unconscious

This book examines Thomas De Quincey's notion of the unconscious in the light of modern cognitive science and nineteenth-century science. It challenges Freudian theories as the default methodology in order to understand De Quincey's oeuvre and the unconscious in literature more generally.

Autorentext
Markus Iseli holds a PhD from the University of Neuchâtel, Switzerland. He published articles in journals such as the European Romantic Review and Romanticism, and he is the recipient of a Swiss National Science Foundation research grant. His work on the cognitive unconscious in the nineteenth-century context also earned him the Henry-E.-Sigerist-Prize from the Swiss Society for the History of Medicine and Sciences.

Inhalt

List of Tables
Acknowledgements
List of Abbreviations
Introduction
PART I: LANGUAGE

1. The Need for Neologisms and the Emergence of Subconscious
2. De Quincey ' 's Subconscious and the Cognitive Unconscious
3. Style and the Revelatory Power of Language
   PART II: BODY AND BRAIN
4. The Embodied Unconscious in Animal Magnetism and Physiology
5. Mesmeric and Opium-Induced States of Mind
6. The Brain-Mind in the Confessions, Literary Criticism, and Suspiria
   Epilogue
   Appendix A
   Appendix B
   Notes
   Bibliography
   Index