19th-Century British Literature and the Problem of Thinking About Others

FAIN: FA-52905-07

Adela Norah Pinch
Regents of the University of Michigan (Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1382)

My book explains why nineteenth-century British writers moralized about the act of thinking about another person, and why they were both attracted to and repulsed by the idea of purely mental relations between persons. Drawing on the novels of George Eliot, the poetry of George Meredith and others, and the philosophical writings of James Frederick Ferrier and others, the book explores how ambivalence about thinking took shape through specific literary forms and practices: omniscient narration, free indirect discourse, apostrophe, poetic meter. I show how the era’s distinctive innovations in literary form both influenced and were influenced by its philosophical and psychological understandings of the act of thinking about another.

Associated Products

Thinking About Other People in Nineteenth Century British Writing (Book)
Title: Thinking About Other People in Nineteenth Century British Writing
Author: Adela Pinch
Abstract: Nineteenth-century life and literature are full of strange accounts that describe the act of one person thinking about another as an ethically problematic, sometimes even a dangerously powerful thing to do. Adela Pinch explains why, when, and under what conditions it is possible, or desirable, to believe that thinking about another person could affect them. She explains why nineteenth century British writers - poets, novelists, philosophers, psychologists, devotees of the occult - were both attracted to and repulsed by radical or substantial notions of purely mental relations between persons, and why they moralized about the practice of thinking about other people in interesting ways. Working at the intersection of literary studies and philosophy, this book both sheds new light on a neglected aspect of Victorian literature and thought, and explores the consequences of, and the value placed on, this strand of thinking about thinking.
Year: 2010
Primary URL: http://http://www.worldcat.org/title/thinking-about-other-people-in-nineteenth-century-british-writing/oclc/858311102&referer=brief_results
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Type: Single author monograph
ISBN: 978-0521764643
Copy sent to NEH?: Yes

---