Lexington Books
Pages: 242
•
Trim: 6¼ x 9⅜
978-1-4985-4526-6 • Hardback • December 2016 • $109.00 • (£84.00)
978-1-4985-4527-3 • eBook • December 2016 • $103.50 • (£80.00)
Ryan A. Davis is associate professor in the Department of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures at Illinois State University.
Alicia Cerezo Paredes is assistant professor in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Introduction, Alicia Cerezo Paredes and Ryan A. Davis
Chapter 1: The Artful Science of Ali Bey, Travis Landry
Chapter 2: José de Letamendi, Symbolic Humanity and Contexts for the Individual in Nineteenth-Century Spain, Dale J. Pratt
Chapter 3: Pogonology, Physiognomy, and the Face of Spanish Masculinity, Collin McKinney
Chapter 4: Hysteria and Couvade in Los pazos de Ulloa and Su único hijo, Kevin Larsen
Chapter 5: The Saint and the Hysteric: Mysticism in Nazarín and Dulce Dueño, Elizabeth Smith Rousselle
Chapter 6: The Reception of Charles Darwin in Spain and the Problem of Abulia in Pío Baroja’s Camino de Perfección, Jerry Hoeg
Chapter 7: Darwin in Spain: Evolutionary Theory in Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries Spanish Science Fiction Narratives, Juan Carlos Martín
Chapter 8: Business of the Heart: Cándida Sanz’s Future-making in the Spiritualist Monthly Constancia (1879–1884), Marta Ferrer Gómez
Chapter 9: “Hypnotism and the Epistemological Limits of Modernity: Alberto de Das and Leopoldo Alas,” Ryan A. Davis
. . . . [this] volume demonstrates that nineteenth-century Spain offers much material and raises intriguing questions, both for literary scholars and for historians of science, that have hitherto been unexplored.— Isis
This is a useful collection of essays that moves interestingly between pseudo-science, respectable science and literary culture, and which should make us reconsider what was central and what was marginal in nineteenth-century Spain. After reading the book, the borderline appears, if not blurred, at the very least rather more porous than one had thought.
— Bulletin of Spanish Studies
Salvaged from history’s dustbin, the fringe discourses in this study present nineteenth-century Spain in a fresh and thought-provoking way. The essays in this volume explore a series of fascinating but often overlooked topics, such as pseudoscience, couvade, pogonology, hypnotism, spiritualism, and more. By shedding light on how science and religion understood human nature during this period, Ryan A. Davis and Alicia Cerezo Paredes show us that the Spanish nineteenth century still has much to offer to the modern scholar.— Margot Versteeg, University of Kansas
Ryan A. Davis and Alicia Cerezo Paredes’s ingenious collection of essays redefines science by recuperating the broad range of discourses originally found under science’s expansive umbrella. In this important new scholarly monograph, experts from the field focus on the fringe—from ‘non-men’ to travelogues and beards to ideaphones—in order to offer an extensive and provocative interrogation of nineteenth-century constructions of human identity, gender, evolution, and faith.— Denise DuPont, Southern Methodist University
This volume challenges the predominant conception of the antagonism between science and spirituality in nineteenth-century Spain, and shows how these two supposed enemies cohabited with greater ease than most scholars have ever realized. While focused on the nineteenth century, the essays ultimately urge us to question the validity of this dichotomy in contemporary times as well. The volume is a superb resource for all scholars of the nineteenth century and for all those interested in the history of science.— Joyce Tolliver, University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign
In this collection, Ryan A. Davis and Alicia Cerezo Paredes aim to correct a sort of ‘scholarly amnesia’ that has largely ignored what they refer to as ‘fringe discourses’—such as phrenology, hypnotism, spiritualism, mysticism. Following a rising tide of recent scholarship on similar topics from critics such as Iarocci and Gullón, this volume offers a plethora of insights on these discourses and in the process proposes a more nuanced understanding of the cultural milieu in Spain’s nineteenth and early twentieth centuries by undoing the dichotomous view of human nature proposed by the monoliths of Science and Religion.— Susan Walter, University of Denver