Palgrave studies in literature, science, and medicine.
PART I: LANGUAGE --;1. The Need for Neologisms and the Emergence of Subconscious --;2. De Quincey's Subconscious and the Cognitive Unconscious --;3. Style and the Revelatory Power of Language --;PART II: BODY AND BRAIN --;4. The Embodied Unconscious in Animal Magnetism and Physiology --;5. Mesmeric and Opium-Induced States of Mind --;6. The Brain-Mind in the Confessions, Literary Criticism, and Suspiria --;Epilogue.
This book examines Thomas De Quincey's notion of the unconscious in the light of modern cognitive science and nineteenth-century science. It challenges Freudian theories as the default methodology in order to understand De Quincey's oeuvre and the unconscious in literature more generally.