Literature, Electricity and Politics 1740 1840 : Electrick Communication Every Where /

This book investigates the science of electricity in the long eighteenth century and its textual life in literary and political writings. Electricity was celebrated as a symbol of enlightened progress, but its operation and its utility were unsettlingly obscure. As a result, debates about the nature...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Fairclough, Mary
Corporate Authors: SpringerLink Online service
Published: Palgrave Macmillan UK : Imprint: Palgrave Macmillan,
Publisher Address: London :
Publication Dates: 2017.
Literature type: eBook
Language: English
Series: Palgrave Studies in Literature, Science and Medicine
Subjects:
Online Access: http://dx.doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-59315-3
Summary: This book investigates the science of electricity in the long eighteenth century and its textual life in literary and political writings. Electricity was celebrated as a symbol of enlightened progress, but its operation and its utility were unsettlingly obscure. As a result, debates about the nature of electricity dovetailed with discussions of the relation between body and soul, the nature of sexual attraction, the properties of revolutionary communication and the mysteries of vitality. This study explores the complex textual manifestations of electricity between 1740 and 1840, in which com
Carrier Form: 1 online resource (IX, 264 pages) : illustrations.
ISBN: 9781137593153
Index Number: PN441
CLC: K103
Contents: Introduction. Electricity, spectacle and figuration -- Chapter 1. Experiment, aether and the soul of the world -- Chapter 2. Electricital medicine, feeling and eroticism -- Chapter 3. Animal electricity, vitality, and revolution -- Chapter 4. Electrochemistry, matter and life -- Epilogue. Michael Faraday and a new electrical era -- Illustrations -- Bibliography -- Index -- .