Thinking about other people in nineteenth-century British writing
By: Adela Pinch
Contributors: MyiLibrary
Series: Cambridge studies in nineteenth-century literature and culture -- 73
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 2010
Place of publication: Cambridge; New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 247
ISBN-13: 9780521764643
Subjects: English literature; Causation in literature; English Idealism; History and criticism; Thought and thinking in literature; Other (Philosophy) in literature; History
Description: "Nineteenth-century life and literature are full of strange accounts that describe the act of one person thinking about another as an ethically problematic, sometimes even a dangerously powerful thing to do. Adela Pinch explains why, when, and under what conditions it is possible, or desirable, to believe that thinking about another person could affect them. She explains why nineteenth century British writers - poets, novelists, philosophers, psychologists, devotees of the occult - were both attracted to and repulsed by radical or substantial notions of purely mental relations between persons, and why they moralized about the practice of thinking about other people in interesting ways. Working at the intersection of literary studies and philosophy, this book both sheds new light on a neglected aspect of Victorian literature and thought, and explores the consequences of, and the value placed on, this strand of thinking about thinking"--Provided by publisher.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.

U. Michigan Faculty Author
Table of contents: title: Machine generated contents note: Introduction: love thinking; 1. Thinking as action: James Frederick Ferrier's Philosophy of Consciousness; 2. Foam, aura, or melody: theorizing mental force in Victorian Britain; 3. Thinking in the second person in nineteenth-century poetry; 4. Thinking and knowing in Patmore and Meredith; 5. Daniel Deronda and the omnipotence of thought; Conclusion: the ethics of belief and the poetics of thinking about another person.