Writing the Brain

Reviews / Votes

Writing the Brain is an outstanding contribution to the growing body of work on nineteenth-century brain science and literature. The author brings extensive knowledge of Anglophone and European neurology to bear on canonical works like Wuthering Heights, Leaves of Grass, and the poems of Emily Dickinson, producing compelling original readings. Schoeberlein's adept use of anecdote and illustration makes this a particularly accessible resource that is well-suited for the classroom. * Anne Stiles, St Louis University * The brain contains multitudes. This revisionist and often surprising book rewrites that organ, fighting against forgetting. Our worries about neuropharmaceuticals and machine learning have a long pre-history. The brain as a cybernetic network of matter and metaphors, protoplasm and electricity, was born around 1800 and nineteenth-century explorations of the material mind glisten here with fresh relevance. As a literary and cultural historian, Stefan Schoeberlein is both truffle-hunter and landscape painter. He has a knack for finding things on both sides of the Atlantic no one has read in a century to rediscover authors we never stopped reading...Writing the Brain orchestrates a scintillating call-and-response between literature and science. Farewell to the two cultures. The brain is their meeting-point. * John Durham Peters, Yale University * Writing the Brain makes a considerable contribution to the study of literature and science... Writing the Brain delineates a compelling account of the literary life of the material mind. * Erica Fretwell, The British Society for Literature and Science *