Hysteria, Hypnotism, the Spirits, and Pornography

by Finn, Michael R.

• ISBN13: 9780874130676
• ISBN10: 0874130670
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2009-07-30
• Publisher: Fairleigh Dickinson Univ Pr
• More Book Details
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Summary

This book explores the life and fiction of the French decadent writer Rachilde (pen name of Marguerite Eymery), using her as a case study to examine the impact late nineteenth-century theories about female hysteria, medical hypnotism, mediums, and spiritualism had on the female creative psyche. It is a book about disempowerment, and re-empowerment through writing.

Author Biography

Michael R. Finn holds a BA and MA from the University of Toronto, and a PhD from Harvard University. He is currently emeritus professor of French at Ryerson University. Dr. Finn's research focused largely on Marcel Proust until the late 1990s, when he became interested in medicine and literature questions not only in Proust, but in the decadent, late nineteenth-century period in France in general. His articles on Proust, Rachilde, and several other fin-de-sicle writers have been published in a wide variety of American, British, and French journals. His book, Proust, the Body and Literary Form (1999, 2006), a study that examines the connections between Proust's nervous nature and his hesitations about literary form, received sparkling reviews. His current research interest is in the interaction between medico-psychological theories on dual personality and the unconscious, and figures of the pre-Freudian unconscious that emerge in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century French fiction.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	p. 9
Introduction	p. 11
List of Abbreviations	p. 23
Rachilde, née Marguerite Eymery	p. 27
Doctors, Hysteria, and Degeneracy	p. 69
Magnetism and Hypnotism	p. 95
Spirits and Possessions	p. 119
Rachilde and the Erotic Literature of Her Time	p. 157
Writing from Possession	p. 186
Conclusion	p. 224
Notes	p. 229
Bibliography	p. 257
Index	p. 279
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