Description
Book SynopsisThe fraught tension between science and religion has loomed large in scholarship about the nineteenth century in Spain, especially given the prominence of the Catholic Church and the discoveries made by Wallace and Darwin. The struggle for epistemological superiority between these two discourses (science and religion) has served to overshadow certain corners of the cultural landscape that, though prominent sites of intellectual exploration in their day, have received comparatively less scholarly attention until recently. Fringe Discourses brings together a group of essays that seeks to restore a sense of the epistemological richness of nineteenth-century Spain. By exploring the relationship between epistemology, modernity, and subjectivity, these essays recover significant efforts by Spanish authors and intellectuals to explain human nature and their world, which seemed to be changing so radically before their eyes. In doing so the essays also reveal just how elastic the relationship w
Trade ReviewThis is a useful collection of essays that moves interestingly between pseudo-science, respectable science and literary culture, and which should make us reconsider what was central and what was marginal in nineteenth-century Spain. After reading the book, the borderline appears, if not blurred, at the very least rather more porous than one had thought. * Bulletin of Spanish Studies *
Salvaged from history’s dustbin, the fringe discourses in this study present nineteenth-century Spain in a fresh and thought-provoking way. The essays in this volume explore a series of fascinating but often overlooked topics, such as pseudoscience, couvade, pogonology, hypnotism, spiritualism, and more. By shedding light on how science and religion understood human nature during this period, Ryan A. Davis and Alicia Cerezo Paredes show us that the Spanish nineteenth century still has much to offer to the modern scholar. -- Margot Versteeg, University of Kansas
Ryan A. Davis and Alicia Cerezo Paredes’s ingenious collection of essays redefines science by recuperating the broad range of discourses originally found under science’s expansive umbrella. In this important new scholarly monograph, experts from the field focus on the fringe—from ‘non-men’ to travelogues and beards to ideaphones—in order to offer an extensive and provocative interrogation of nineteenth-century constructions of human identity, gender, evolution, and faith. -- Denise DuPont, Southern Methodist University
This volume challenges the predominant conception of the antagonism between science and spirituality in nineteenth-century Spain, and shows how these two supposed enemies cohabited with greater ease than most scholars have ever realized. While focused on the nineteenth century, the essays ultimately urge us to question the validity of this dichotomy in contemporary times as well. The volume is a superb resource for all scholars of the nineteenth century and for all those interested in the history of science. -- Joyce Tolliver, University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign
In this collection, Ryan A. Davis and Alicia Cerezo Paredes aim to correct a sort of ‘scholarly amnesia’ that has largely ignored what they refer to as ‘fringe discourses’—such as phrenology, hypnotism, spiritualism, mysticism. Following a rising tide of recent scholarship on similar topics from critics such as Iarocci and Gullón, this volume offers a plethora of insights on these discourses and in the process proposes a more nuanced understanding of the cultural milieu in Spain’s nineteenth and early twentieth centuries by undoing the dichotomous view of human nature proposed by the monoliths of Science and Religion. -- Susan Walter, University of Denver
Table of ContentsIntroduction, Alicia Cerezo Paredes and Ryan A. Davis Chapter 1: The Artful Science of Ali Bey, Travis Landry Chapter 2: José de Letamendi, Symbolic Humanity and Contexts for the Individual in Nineteenth-Century Spain, Dale J. Pratt Chapter 3: Pogonology, Physiognomy, and the Face of Spanish Masculinity, Collin McKinney Chapter 4: Hysteria and Couvade in Los pazos de Ulloa and Su único hijo, Kevin Larsen Chapter 5: The Saint and the Hysteric: Mysticism in Nazarín and Dulce Dueño, Elizabeth Smith Rousselle Chapter 6: The Reception of Charles Darwin in Spain and the Problem of Abulia in Pío Baroja’s Camino de Perfección, Jerry Hoeg Chapter 7: Darwin in Spain: Evolutionary Theory in Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries Spanish Science Fiction Narratives, Juan Carlos Martín Chapter 8: Business of the Heart: Cándida Sanz’s Future-making in the Spiritualist Monthly Constancia (1879–1884), Marta Ferrer Gómez Chapter 9: “Hypnotism and the Epistemological Limits of Modernity: Alberto de Das and Leopoldo Alas,” Ryan A. Davis
