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Durham E-Theses Durham E-Theses Airy Children of Our Brain: Emotion, Science and the Legacy of Eighteenth-Century Philosophy in the Shelley Circle, 1812-1821 SHIH, TERENCE,H,W How to cite: SHIH, TERENCE,H,W (2011) Airy Children of Our Brain: Emotion, Science and the Legacy of Eighteenth-Century Philosophy in the Shelley Circle, 1812-1821 , Durham theses, Durham University. Available at Durham E-Theses Online: http://etheses.dur.ac.uk/877/ Use policy The full-text may be used and/or reproduced, and given to third parties in any format or medium, without prior permission or charge, for personal research or study, educational, or not-for-prot purposes provided that: • a full bibliographic reference is made to the original source • a link is made to the metadata record in Durham E-Theses • the full-text is not changed in any way The full-text must not be sold in any format or medium without the formal permission of the copyright holders. Please consult the full Durham E-Theses policy for further details. Academic Support Oce, Durham University, University Oce, Old Elvet, Durham DH1 3HP e-mail: [email protected] Tel: +44 0191 334 6107 http://etheses.dur.ac.uk 2 ‘Airy Children of Our Brain’: Emotion, Science and the Legacy of Eighteenth-Century Philosophy in the Shelley Circle, 1812-1821 Terence H. W. Shih Submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of English Studies Durham University 2011 ABSTRACT This thesis examines the physical effects of human emotion and the mind through selected texts written by the Shelley circle, including P. B. Shelley, Mary Shelley, and Lord Byron. Emotion is a significant variable that dominates human existence. For this reason, the concept of emotion continues to intrigue numerous scientists working today in the fields of neuroscience, psychology, biology, and even robotics. With the rise of neuroscientific or cognitive approaches, the materiality of the mind has also been increasingly discussed in literary studies. Critics, including Alan Richardson, Noel Jackson, and Richard Holmes, revisit the mind and English Romanticism drawing on various scientific perspectives. Other critics, such as Adela Pinch, Thomas Pfau, and Richard C. Sha, have also reflected on emotional studies and Romanticism. Finding affinities with this kind of approach, recently defined as ‘cognitive historicism’, my thesis explores the legacy of eighteenth-century mental philosophy and science in the Shelley circle, 1812-1821. I argue that the Shelley circle’s scientific understanding of the mind and emotion is influenced by the materialism, empiricism, and aesthetics prevalent in the eighteenth century, which come into their own in the Romantic period to prefigure our current scientific understanding of emotion. Chapter One surveys the Shelley circle’s preoccupation with emotion and science and how this is manifest, to varying degrees, in a wide range of critical responses to Frankenstein and writings of other members of the group during this period. During the course of this critical survey I develop the concept of the ‘materiality of emotion’, which is used in subsequent chapters to re-examine the Shelley circle’s scientific philosophy and how it is represented in literary texts written by the group. Chapter Two argues that Shelley develops his views of the mind through his atheistic and materialist reasoning. This materialist thinking of the mind in Queen Mab exerts a seminal influence on how the Shelley circle thought about the workings of human emotion. Chapter Three focuses on Mary Shelley and contemporary eighteenth- and nineteenth-century scientific debates to suggest that the representation of the mechanism of the body in Frankenstein points to the intricate relations between the mechanisms of the mind and emotion and offers a means to heal the schism between French materialism and vitalism. Chapter Four investigates the depiction of emotional effects on the mind in Byron’s Manfred and Shelley’s Alastor. Both poets draw on scientific reasoning and imagination to come to terms with grief, the failure of love, and the loss of ideals. Chapter Five claims that Shelley’s Frankenstein meditates on the effects of physiological elements of the beautiful and the ugly, as well as emotional responses to the sublime science. My final chapter draws on cultural history and gender theory to interpret Byron’s Don Juan (Canto One) and Shelley’s Epipsychidion in an attempt to reaffirm the beautiful and the sublime in their materialist concept of love or sexuality. CONTENTS Acknowledgements ……………………………………………………………………..….... i Preface …….……………………………………………………………………….………... iii CHAPTER ONE: Introduction: ‘Beyond Literature and Science: The Turn to Emotion in the Shelley Circle’ ………………………………………….……………………………………. 1 CHAPTER TWO: ‘The Science of the Mind: Shelley’s Queen Mab (1813)’ ……………... 35 I. A Legacy of Eighteenth-Century Reason II. Cognitive Education: The Case of Ianthe III. Shelley’s Sceptical Mind: The Case of Ahasuerus IV. The Ethics of the Mind CHAPTER THREE: ‘New Materialism: Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818)’ …………... 90 I. Alchemy and Hellenism: From the Body to the Emotions II. The Changing Concept of the Mind in the Enlightenment III. The Birth of ‘New’ Materialism in Romanticism CHAPTER FOUR: ‘Tracing Emotion: Shelley’s Alastor (1816) and Byron’s Manfred (1817)’ ...………..………………………………………………………………………………… 143 I. The Mind and Science II. Love and Emotion CHAPTER FIVE: ‘A Storm of the Mind: Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818)’ ……….... 190 I. Physiological Aesthetics: The Beautiful and the Ugly II. Emotion in Frankenstein’s Sublime Science CHAPTER SIX: ‘Seeking Love: Byron’s Don Juan (1819) and Shelley’s Epipsychidion (1821)’ ….……...………………..………………………………………………..……….. 234 I. The Womaniser’s Love and Queer Emotion II. Materialist Transcendence: The Beautiful and the Sublime Afterword: ‘Before and After the Shelley Circle 1812-1821: Cognitive Science and the Beauty Industry’ …........……………..……………………………………………………. 295 Bibliography …….………………………………………………………………………… 305 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Writing this thesis can be likened to Frankenstein’s own creation and has been an experience full of both toil and great excitement. Different from Frankenstein’s resulting tragedy, my own endeavours have eventually paid-off. During the journey towards the completion of my thesis, I am grateful for all the support and encouragement I have received from many important people. I am particularly indebted to my supervisor, Dr Mark Sandy, who has provided me with a wealth of advice and amiability that curbed my sometimes over-Faustian ambition and helped to shape my ideas and my work into its current form. Professor Michael O’Neill, my doctoral advisor at Durham, also played a critical role in the genesis of this thesis. Initially, he helped me to conceptualise my preliminary ideas about emotion and science in English Romanticism. The examiners of my PhD thesis also provided me with their generous assistance and constructive comments at the viva. My special gratitude goes to Professor Simon Bainbridge, Lancaster University, and Dr Sarah Wootton, Durham University. Without warm support from many academics and friends, my academic odyssey could have been unexpectedly prolonged. Here are my grateful thanks to all of them. Without financial support from various organisations and individuals, this thesis would not have been completed as readily and as smoothly. I am delighted to acknowledge the Ministry of Education, Taiwan, which funded my PhD studies. Some academic institutions i and societies, in particular, supported my research trips and a number of conference presentations, through which my ideas were shared, shaped, and reshaped. My thanks go to the Department of English Studies, the Faculty of Arts and Humanities, the Wolfson Research Institute, and University College (Castle) at Durham. I would also like to thank the following organisations for their generous funds: Society for Literature, Science, and the Arts (SLSA), British Association for Romantic Studies (BARS), Wordsworth Conference Foundation, Keats-Shelley Memorial Association (KSMA), Society for Social Studies of Science (4S), Society for Social History of Medicine (SSHM), and Edinburgh University. I am particularly indebted to my parents for both their financial and spiritual support. Terence H. W. Shih, 23 May 2011 Department of English Studies, Durham University ii PREFACE Neuroscientific or ‘Cognitive Historicism’, advocated by critics, such as George Lakoff, Alan Richardson, and Lisa Zunshine, is an emerging approach that has brought science to the fore of British Romantic studies. In addition to Richardson, Noel Jackson and Richard Holmes also draw on British Romanticism, science, and the mind. A discourse of emotions, in my inquiries into Romantic studies, draws on research by Adela Pinch, Thomas Pfau, and Richard C. Sha. My interest in science and emotion is, therefore, contextualised in these scientific and aesthetic trends and especially focused on English Romanticism, as well as its legacy of long eighteenth-century philosophy and science. This concept of science was defined earlier by eighteenth-century philosophers, for example Isaac Watts (1674-1748). In his Logic , Watts applies science to ‘a whole body of regular or methodical observations or propositions, … concerning any subject of speculation’ (II.ii.§9). 1 According to The Oxford English Dictionary , the term ‘science’ referred to a ‘state or fact of knowing’ and more broadly as systematised forms of ‘knowledge’ since the fourteenth
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