The Politics of Anxiety in Nineteenth-Century American Literature

Justine Murison is Assistant Professor of English at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.

• Introduction; 1. A bond-slave to the mind: sympathy and hypochondria in Robert Montgomery Bird's Sheppard Lee; 2. Frogs, dogs, and mobs: reflex and democracy in Edgar Allan Poe's satires; 3. Invasions of privacy: clairvoyance and Utopian failure in Antebellum romance; 4. 'All that is enthusiastic': revival and reform in Harriet Beecher Stowe's Dred; 5. Cui bono?: Spiritualism and empiricism from the Civil War to American nervousness; Epilogue: the confidences of anxiety.

"In this fascinating study, Justine Murison investigates the various discourses surrounding the workings of and roles played by the nervous system in nineteenth-century literature and culture. In the course of tracing circuits of exchange between body and mind, individual and surrounding environment, she calls attention to a variety of applications for new, oftentimes contested, understandings of physiological integrity and vulnerability in the era’s cultural, national, and political movements....Murison’s attention to “the role of embodiment in constructing social, historical, and most of all, fictional narratives” (p. 12) reflects the fact that her project is part of a very big, field-changing, post–“neuroscientific turn” (p. 175) methodological approach, and it’s exciting work to watch unfold." -Maura D’Amore, THE NEW ENGLAND QUARTERLY