The Dome of Thought
Phrenology and the Nineteenth-Century Popular Imagination
1st Edition
Published on 29. March 2022
336 pages
978-1-5261-4374-7 (ISBN)
Description
The dome of thought is the first study of phrenology based primarily on the popular - rather than medical - appreciation of this important and controversial pseudoscience. With detailed reference to the reports printed in popular newspapers from the early years of the nineteenth century to the fin de siecle, the book provides an unequalled insight into the Victorian public's understanding of the techniques, assumptions and implications of defining a person's character by way of the bumps on their skull. Highly relevant to the study of the many authors - Wilkie Collins, Charles Dickens, and George Eliot, among them - whose fiction was informed by the imagery of phrenology, The dome of thought will prove an essential resource for anybody with an interest in the popular and literary culture of the nineteenth century, including literary scholars, medical historians and the general reader. -- .
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More details
Language
English
Place of publication
United Kingdom
Illustrations
10 black & white, 1 table
ISBN-13
978-1-5261-4374-7 (9781526143747)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
Book
03/2022
Manchester University Press
€116.40
Shipment within 15-20 days
Person
William Hughes is Professor of Literature in English at the University of Macau -- .
Content
Preamble 'This far-famed skull': exhumation and the autopsy of talent
1 'Dr Gall, the anatomist, who gives lectures on the skull': phrenology in Britain during the first decade of the nineteenth century
2 'A field for quacks to fatten in': phrenology in the British Isles
3 'The doctrines of phrenology shall spread over Britain': George Combe and the rise of British phrenology
4 'That strange amalgamation of the two sciences': mesmerism, celebrity practitioners and the schism of 1842-3
Conclusion: The decadence of phrenology: materiality and meaninglessness in modern Britain
Coda The phrenology of Donald J. Trump
Bibliography
Index -- .
1 'Dr Gall, the anatomist, who gives lectures on the skull': phrenology in Britain during the first decade of the nineteenth century
2 'A field for quacks to fatten in': phrenology in the British Isles
3 'The doctrines of phrenology shall spread over Britain': George Combe and the rise of British phrenology
4 'That strange amalgamation of the two sciences': mesmerism, celebrity practitioners and the schism of 1842-3
Conclusion: The decadence of phrenology: materiality and meaninglessness in modern Britain
Coda The phrenology of Donald J. Trump
Bibliography
Index -- .
