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In this introduction, I evoke the poetic force and spectacular experiences of electricity in the 19th century. Electricity is taken here as a specific subject for “science and imagination studies”, an inter‐ and multidisciplinary perspective that takes into account the history of science, medicine and technology as well as literature, theatre studies and dance studies, among other disciplines. The...
In this essay, I examine the work of the little‐studied 19th‐century American novelist John Neal as a way of investigating how electricity was used to contest romantic ideas of organic wholeness. Neal draws on electrical science and imagery repeatedly in his romantic novels and criticism of the early 1820s. In describing Neal's use of electricity, I place his work in conversation with Hans Christian...
This paper surveys a range of scientific, popular scientific and literary texts from the late‐19th‐ to the early 20th‐centuries in order to demonstrate electricity's importance within theories of sexuality, in general, and homosexuality, in particular.
In 1892 the English natural philosopher and chemist William Crookes speculated about ‘Some Possibilities of Electricity’ in the pages of the Fortnightly Review. Crookes discussed the nature of electricity and its relationship to the ether. He talked about the prospect of wireless communication, of electrical telepathy and controlling the weather. Crookes's article is only one instance of a trend towards...
At the end of the 19th century, electricity made its entrance on stage, embodied and personified by female dancers. Analysing one such entrance of electricity in a celebratory ballet‐pantomime, shown during the 1891 International Electrotechnical Exhibition in Frankfurt, the paper contextualizes the allegorical appearance within an in‐depth discussion of the exhibition and its aesthetics. Stressing...
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