Preface This is the first of two volumes titled Literature, Neurology, and Neuroscience. With the subtitle, Historical and Literary Connections, it examines a broad range of association between literature and neuroscience, including literary authors’ ties to prominent neuroscientists; neurologists who penned famous literary works; and deployment of the latest theories of brain and mind in the literatures of various periods, particularly during the eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries. Its companion piece on literature, subtitled Neurological and Psychiatric Disorders, focuses more on specific neurological diagnoses and their treatments, as depicted in English, French, and Russian literature from the Early Modern Period until the present day. Authors in this companion volume explore conditions as diverse as stroke, meningitis, parkinsonism, and neurosyphilis, and treatments ranging from lobotomy to electroconvulsive therapy. These two Progress in Brain Research volumes were preceded in 2013 by two other edited volumes, The Fine Arts, Neurology, and Neuroscience, and they will be followed (in 2015) by two volumes to be called Music, Neurology, and Neuroscience. Nineteenth-century literature and neuroscience are particularly well-represented in this volume. This seems appropriate, since the nineteenth century witnessed the establishment of neuroscience as a discipline. In the second half of the nineteenth century, for instance, David Ferrier, John Hughlings Jackson, and others conducted seminal studies on cerebral localization; Santiago Ramo´n y Cajal discovered the neuron; and Wilhelm Wundt established the first laboratory devoted to experimental psychology. This was also a time when science and literature were particularly responsive to one another, since disciplinary boundaries were more porous than they are today. During this period, nonscientists could write with some authority about neurological phenomena in mainstream publications, while specialized scientific journals like Brain (1878–present) and Mind (1876–present) were just getting off the ground. Many of the essays in this volume explore the connections between literature and neuroscience during this tumultuous century. Others examine the legacy of nineteenth-century neuroscientific discoveries in twentieth and twenty-first century writings. This volume is divided into four sections. In Part 1, “Literature and Neuroscientific Discoveries,” authors examine how specific neurological discoveries influenced famous literary works and vice versa. For instance, Cajal’s neuron doctrine surfaced in Oscar Wilde’s fiction of the early 1890s, such as in The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891), whereas earlier literary accounts of electric fish probably stimulated the discovery of the animal (neuromuscular) electricity during the second half of the eighteenth century. Additionally, studies of retinal after-images by Franz Boll and Wilhelm Ku¨hne influenced fiction by Rudyard Kipling and Jules Verne, among others. This section also considers how certain literary works, such as Marcel Proust’s In Search of Lost Time (1913–1927), served as touchstones for scientific discussion. In Proust’s case, the famous madeleine episode is frequently cited in
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neurological studies of emotion, olfaction, and memory, although, as shown in a chapter devoted to it, it is often misread by researchers. Part 2, “Theories of Brain and Mind in Literature,” explores earlier ways of thinking about the brain and nervous system, including phrenology and physiognomy. Phrenology was a popular fad of the Victorian era that involved reading skull bumps to determine character and intelligence, whereas physiognomy focused more on correlating facial features to character traits. Both phrenology and physiognomy fell out of scientific and mainstream medical favor well before the mid-nineteenth century, but were important forerunners of cerebral localization, and continued to influence popular thinking. These scientific fads, along with other unusual approaches to neurology, can be found in mid-nineteenth-century fiction, from Gothic short stories by Irish writer Sheridan Le Fanu to popular novels by Charlotte Bronte¨, Charles Dickens, and George Eliot. Part 3, “Making Literary Connections,” explores fruitful relationships between physicians, neurologists, and literary authors. For instance, Bram Stoker, the author of Dracula, had a brother who was a renowned neurosurgeon. Stoker consulted with this brother about how to portray the medical scenes in his famous vampire novel from 1897. This section also discusses several literary figures who were scientific and medical experts in their own right, such as Peter Mark Roget, a physician– scientist who later gained fame as the author of the eponymic Thesaurus, and Harvard physiologists Walter Cannon and Alexander Forbes, who wrote novels and literary memoirs exploring the nature of science and its social and motivational significance. Similarly, John William Polidori, the author of the Gothic short story The Vampyre, was a promising young physician who treated Lord Byron during the famous poet’s travels on the continent. Polidori had written a medical dissertation at the University of Edinburgh on the topic of somnambulism, a theme that would surface in several of his literary works, and subsequently the writings of many others. The final section of this volume, “Creativity and Aesthetics,” delves into the topics of neuroaesthetics and the role of neurological conditions (such as autism or epilepsy) in artistic creativity. One of the essays in this section retroactively applies the insights of modern neuroscience and cognitive literary criticism to Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway (1925), whereas another examines the poetry written by injured soldiers and their caretakers during and immediately after the First World War. Two additional essays explore topics related to neurological disorders: specifically, Fyodor Dostoevsky’s struggles with epilepsy, viewed alongside the epileptic characters in his fiction; and Philadelphia neurologist Silas Weir Mitchell’s prescient observations of neurological phenomena that some might now view as symptoms of autistic spectrum disorders. Mitchell depicts such phenomena in his fiction, particularly his novel When All the Woods Were Green (1894), half a century before autism and autistic-like behaviors were brought to the fore by Leo Kanner and Hans Asperger. While this volume represents only a small sampling of possible connections between literature and neurology, we hope that it will stimulate our readers to think about neurological conditions and their treatments in the works of other authors
Preface
and other cultures, adding to an exciting but generally overlooked field of research. During the past few decades, literary scholars, historians of science, and neurologists have written productively on intersections between literature and neurology. Such work generally falls into one of two categories: historicist accounts that examine literary works alongside neurological discoveries of the same time period, and cognitive literary studies that retroactively apply the insights of newer neuroscience research to the literature of earlier periods. The historicist research expands our knowledge of how scientific and literary culture influenced each other within a given time period. Cognitive literary studies, meanwhile, address the question of why literature evolved in the first place, for example, what adaptive purpose(s) does it serve? Both of these strands of research are valuable, and both are represented in this volume, although historicist approaches predominate. We hope readers will enjoy this volume’s survey of what this exciting interdisciplinary field has to offer. Anne Stiles Stanley Finger Franc¸ois Boller
Recommended Additional Readings Dames, N., 2007. Physiology of the Novel: Reading, Neural Science, and the Form of Victorian Fiction. Oxford University Press, New York. Richardson, A., 2001. British Romanticism and the Science of the Mind. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Rousseau, G., 2005. Nervous Acts: Essays on Literature and Sensibility. Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke. Stiles, A. (Ed.), 2007. Neurology and Literature, 1860–1920. Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke. Stiles, A., 2012. Popular Fiction and Brain Science in the Late Nineteenth Century. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Young, K., 2010. Imagining Minds: The Neuro-Aesthetics of Austen, Eliot, and Hardy. The Ohio State University Press, Columbus.
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neurological studies of emotion, olfaction, and memory, although, as shown in a chapter devoted to it, it is often misread by researchers. Part 2, “Theories of Brain and Mind in Literature,” explores earlier ways of thinking about the brain and nervous system, including phrenology and physiognomy. Phrenology was a popular fad of the Victorian era that involved reading skull bumps to determine character and intelligence, whereas physiognomy focused more on correlating facial features to character traits. Both phrenology and physiognomy fell out of scientific and mainstream medical favor well before the mid-nineteenth century, but were important forerunners of cerebral localization, and continued to influence popular thinking. These scientific fads, along with other unusual approaches to neurology, can be found in mid-nineteenth-century fiction, from Gothic short stories by Irish writer Sheridan Le Fanu to popular novels by Charlotte Bronte¨, Charles Dickens, and George Eliot. Part 3, “Making Literary Connections,” explores fruitful relationships between physicians, neurologists, and literary authors. For instance, Bram Stoker, the author of Dracula, had a brother who was a renowned neurosurgeon. Stoker consulted with this brother about how to portray the medical scenes in his famous vampire novel from 1897. This section also discusses several literary figures who were scientific and medical experts in their own right, such as Peter Mark Roget, a physician– scientist who later gained fame as the author of the eponymic Thesaurus, and Harvard physiologists Walter Cannon and Alexander Forbes, who wrote novels and literary memoirs exploring the nature of science and its social and motivational significance. Similarly, John William Polidori, the author of the Gothic short story The Vampyre, was a promising young physician who treated Lord Byron during the famous poet’s travels on the continent. Polidori had written a medical dissertation at the University of Edinburgh on the topic of somnambulism, a theme that would surface in several of his literary works, and subsequently the writings of many others. The final section of this volume, “Creativity and Aesthetics,” delves into the topics of neuroaesthetics and the role of neurological conditions (such as autism or epilepsy) in artistic creativity. One of the essays in this section retroactively applies the insights of modern neuroscience and cognitive literary criticism to Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway (1925), whereas another examines the poetry written by injured soldiers and their caretakers during and immediately after the First World War. Two additional essays explore topics related to neurological disorders: specifically, Fyodor Dostoevsky’s struggles with epilepsy, viewed alongside the epileptic characters in his fiction; and Philadelphia neurologist Silas Weir Mitchell’s prescient observations of neurological phenomena that some might now view as symptoms of autistic spectrum disorders. Mitchell depicts such phenomena in his fiction, particularly his novel When All the Woods Were Green (1894), half a century before autism and autistic-like behaviors were brought to the fore by Leo Kanner and Hans Asperger. While this volume represents only a small sampling of possible connections between literature and neurology, we hope that it will stimulate our readers to think about neurological conditions and their treatments in the works of other authors
Preface
and other cultures, adding to an exciting but generally overlooked field of research. During the past few decades, literary scholars, historians of science, and neurologists have written productively on intersections between literature and neurology. Such work generally falls into one of two categories: historicist accounts that examine literary works alongside neurological discoveries of the same time period, and cognitive literary studies that retroactively apply the insights of newer neuroscience research to the literature of earlier periods. The historicist research expands our knowledge of how scientific and literary culture influenced each other within a given time period. Cognitive literary studies, meanwhile, address the question of why literature evolved in the first place, for example, what adaptive purpose(s) does it serve? Both of these strands of research are valuable, and both are represented in this volume, although historicist approaches predominate. We hope readers will enjoy this volume’s survey of what this exciting interdisciplinary field has to offer. Anne Stiles Stanley Finger Franc¸ois Boller
Recommended Additional Readings Dames, N., 2007. Physiology of the Novel: Reading, Neural Science, and the Form of Victorian Fiction. Oxford University Press, New York. Richardson, A., 2001. British Romanticism and the Science of the Mind. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Rousseau, G., 2005. Nervous Acts: Essays on Literature and Sensibility. Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke. Stiles, A. (Ed.), 2007. Neurology and Literature, 1860–1920. Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke. Stiles, A., 2012. Popular Fiction and Brain Science in the Late Nineteenth Century. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Young, K., 2010. Imagining Minds: The Neuro-Aesthetics of Austen, Eliot, and Hardy. The Ohio State University Press, Columbus.
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