Overview

"Nineteenth-century investigations into the nervous system produced extraordinary discoveries that changed ways of thinking far beyond the scientific community. Over the course of the century, scientists began to conceive of the subject not principally as soul, mind, or even brain, but instead as a complex of organically interacting mechanisms, many of them operating more or less autonomously and unconsciously. Meanwhile, theatrical works of the time by Shelley, Wagner, Dickens, Buchner, Zola, and Strindberg, sought to play directly on the nerves of the spectators through non-representational means, comprising a coherent genre Matthew Wilson Smith has dubbed the ""theaters of sensation."" The Nervous Stage examines the relations between theatrical practices and the scientific study of the nervous system, arguing that to a significant degree, modern theater emerged out of the interaction between these two apparently disparate fields. In six chapters, The Nervous Stage makes three fundamental contributions to scholarship on comparative literature, specifically in the areas of drama/performance, cognitive literary studies, and the beginnings of global modernism. Through a series of revisionist readings of specific theatrical works and artists, Smith demonstrates that a number of literary texts were deeply engaged in dialogue with the neurological sciences of their period, and that an appreciation of this dialogue helps us better to understand their significance for their own historical period as well as for our own. Furthermore, it argues that a number of lesser-known works--ranging from certain ""closet dramas"" such as Shelley's The Cenci to popular melodramas such as Augustin Daly's Under the Gaslight--had much greater cultural significance than has been acknowledged heretofore."

Full Product Details

9780190644116

Table of Contents

Reviews

... given the prominence of the figures and theories discussed, Wilson Smith undeniably delivers what he sets out to do: a novel reading of theatre that stands in close relation to developments in the study of neuroscience. For me, he also offers a conception of neuroscience refreshed by its influence on us being not only via direct therapeutic innovations, but by complex, subtle and pervasive influences on our self-conception. --Matthew Broome, Times Higher Education ... this brilliant study is destined to become a standard in the field. ... Summing Up: Highly recommended. Graduate students, researchers, faculty. --D. B. Wilmeth, CHOICE In this compelling book, Matthew Wilson Smith shows us how visionaries from Shelley to Artaud turned the stage into a laboratory for the new science of nerves-and how theater makers have been trying to get under our skin ever since. Written with verve, The Nervous Stage is a story of the thrills and sensations that made the theater modern. --Martin Puchner, Harvard University Highly original, illuminating, and thought-provoking, Matthew Wilson Smith's study reexamines the evolution of modern drama in the light of a nascent neuroscience. His rare scholarship and critical acumen offer exciting parallels and novel associations on every page. I expect this to be as influential a work as Joseph Roach's A Player's Passion or Marvin Carlson's The Haunted Stage. --Lawrence Senelick, Tufts University [M]akes a persuasive case for the theater's centrality to intellectual history in the eighteenth through twentieth centuries. That this may seem so novel has much to do with the complicatedly theater-averse nature of humanities departments outside of a few designated preserves. Smith's book suggests the scope of what we are missing. --Nineteenth Century Literature

Author Information

Matthew Wilson Smith is Associate Professor of German Studies and Theater & Performance Studies at Stanford University. He is the author of The Total Work of Art: From Bayreuth to Cyberspace (Routledge, 2007) and the editor of Georg B�chner: The Major Works (Norton, 2011)

Tab Content 6

Customer Reviews

Recent Reviews

Countries Available