Writing the Brain

Writing the Brain analyzes the intersections, overlaps, and cross pollutions between early brain science and literature between 1800 and 1880 in England and the United States. Many of the foundational insights of modern neuroscience were made during this period, but they have rarely received extended scholarly attention in literary studies. Author Stefan Schöberlein changes that by reading literary genres and neuroscientific discoveries in tandem, often with particular attention to technological similes and metaphors. It revisits canonical works (Whitman, Dickens, Poe) and presents newly discovered periodical texts, often coupled with historical illustrations. The resulting study sketches out a new, transatlantic field of inquiry as well as a new corpus of texts for readers and scholars of the nineteenth century.