Thesis advisor: Rosemarie Bodenheimer / By focusing on the predominance of semi-conscious and unconscious states in both nineteenth-century British literature and psychology, this dissertation outlines the recognizable and multi-faceted relation existing between literature and psychology. Besides their obvious prevalence in sensation novels later in the period, these states, which I call ecstatic states, appeared in many of the most prominent, canonical novels of the nineteenth century. Prominent Victorian psychologists, such as Robert MacNish, John Abercrombie, James Cowles Prichard, and Forbes Winslow among others, connected ecstatic states, including fiction reading, to insanity, since these states exhibited an underlying component of self-loss in which the boundaries of the conscious self--time, will, and identity--dissolved. They were a troubling, yet common phenomenon of the mind that preoccupied the entire spectrum of middle class Victorian intellectual life--businessmen, novelists, literary critics, and psychologists--and these states are still fascinating neuroscientists today. This study shows how the Victorian medical practice of moral management sought to control these states by calling for the regulation and often the confinement of the imagination. What began as a method used solely in the insane asylum came to undergird much of Victorian life, including the many hostile reactions to the addictive and class-leveling powers of the novel. My dissertation emphasizes how certain Victorian novelists not only took up the role of psychologists themselves but also resisted and revised accepted psychology within their novels. Charlotte Brontë, Charles Dickens, and George Eliot reacted in distinctive ways against the oppressive tenets of moral management. My readings of the novels Jane Eyre, Villette, Hard Times, Our Mutual Friend, The Mill on the Floss, and Romola show how it is the unrelenting regulation of the imagination that creates the various forms of mania and becomes ultimately devastating to the self. For these novelists, the dismantling of conscious thought and will, so alarming to the advocates of moral management, formed the crux of personal growth, moral choice, and ethical responsiveness. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2013. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: English.

This thesis analyses the individual-nature relationship in Samuel Taylor Coleridge&#039 / s poems. It begins with an overview of Coleridge&#039 / s inconsistent views on the subject, as reflected in his prose writings, and explains the personal reasons behind such inconsistencies. The thesis then asserts that despite the inconsonant views expressed in his prose writings, Coleridge&#039 / s poems display a consistent view of the individual-nature relationship. According to this view, the relationship is constituted of three consecutive stages. In the first stage the individual passively perceives nature with his senses. When he ascends to the second stage, he forms spiritual unity with nature and becomes one with her. Finally, in the third stage, through the use of his imagination, he creates a new nature out of the one he has perceived. This view of the individual-nature relationship will be illustrated and exemplified through the analysis of the poems &quot / The Eolian Harp&quot / , The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, and &quot / Dejection: An Ode&quot / .

Although Victorian psychology has been the subject of much recent scholarship, Elizabeth Gaskell's work has not been considered in relation to nineteenth-century theories of mind. In this thesis, I argue that Gaskell's final novel, Wives and Daughters, deals with associationism, an early branch of psychology that played a key role in public debates over cognition that took place throughout the century. Gaskell was exposed to associationism through her Unitarian faith, and Unitarian educators in particular articulated associationist principles in their writings about cognitive development. Gaskell was preoccupied with a similar model of learning throughout her fiction, and I read Wives and Daughters as a novel that redefines education in associationist terms, presenting the protagonist Molly Gibson's education not as a matter of formal schooling but as a matter of experiential and psychological growth.

Denna studie syftar till att undersöka om det finns samband mellan geometriska former och populärlitterära genrer och hur dessa i sådana fall motiveras. De geometriska former som inkluderas i studien är cirkel, kvadrat, romb och två typer av trianglar (där den ena har spetsen uppåt och den andra nedåt) och de populärlitterära genrer som undersöks är romantik, deckare, science fiction, fantasy och skräck. Först har en webbenkät genomförts, vilken gav svar på vilka geometriska former 131 respondenter ansåg stämma bäst respektive sämst in på de olika populärlitterära genrerna. Enkätresultatet följdes sedan upp med två fokusgruppintervjuer, där respondenterna fick diskutera både egna val och enkätresultat och därmed ge förklaringar till dessa. Den samlade empirin analyserades sedan med utgångspunkt i associationsteori, symbolik och psykologisk forskning kopplad till geometrisk form samt populärlitteraturvetenskap. Det framkom då att inte alla genrer hade underbyggda samband till en geometrisk form, men att det fanns två tydliga positiva resultat. Cirkeln har en mycket stark koppling till genren romantik och likaså gäller mellan de båda trianglarna och science fiction. Cirkelns koppling till romantik motiverades med att cirkeln upplevdes mjuk, positiv, varm och som en evighetssymbol. Sambandet mellan trianglarna och science fiction förklarades med att trianglarna upplevdes hårda, kalla och metalliska samt att respondenterna hade flera kulturella referenser till trianglar i science fiction. Det fanns också ett tydligt negativt samband mellan cirkeln och de båda genrerna deckare och skräck. Där löd motiveringen att deckare och skräck innehåller brutala och hotfulla element som inte upplevdes stämma överens med cirkelns mjuka, positiva form.

This work examines British inquiry into the human mind in the early nineteenth century using a multivalent structural analysis of ideas and practices within traditions established by Hume, Hartley, and Reid. While these traditions were propagated into the nineteenth century by such figures as Thomas Brown, James Mill, Sir William Hamilton, and Alexander Bain, this later period has received a dearth of attention in the history of psychology, the history of philosophy, and the history of ideas in general. This conspicuous lacuna forms the basis for two simple questions: What was the situated significance of work on the human mind in nineteenth century Britain? What was it supposed to accomplish, or be about? In particular, I focus on the differentiation of science from philosophy as a particular kind of non-science, investigating a set of existing formulations of the respective characters of the two. Using this historiographic survey as a springboard, I establish an analytical apparatus based upon four structural dimensions that I term conceptual, expository, iconic, and genealogical. Taken together, these four elements form an historical problematic, a set of persistent features and issues that structured work on mental subjects. With respect to conceptual structure, I propose a set of a dozen persistently central, but fluid, concept clusters involved in the study of mind. Regarding texts themselves, I situate my subject in terms of specific audience groups, patterns of expository development, and topical scope. I also examine the limiting influence of authorial and editorial practices on the appearance of the conceptual systems these texts convey. Iconic structural patterns focus even more closely on textual content, demonstrating shifts in the density, nature, and extent of citation within the intellectual community. These four dimensions interact significantly, reflecting the complex character of an active community of intellectual discussion. Having established this analytical space, I return to the basic terminological distinction between science and philosophy to investigate what was at stake in distinguishing these two fields in the nineteenth century. The dichotomy was far from definitive: British mental inquiry from the time of Hume's Treatise to that of Bain's first two major works never established a firm division of science from philosophy, but the evidence suggests several directions of tension along which this split would subsequently emerge. As demonstrated by evidence from the first volume of the journal, Mind, founded by Bain in 1876, discussions among students of the human mind in the nineteenth century established a position for mental philosophy itself as arbiter of the new science-philosophy dipole. In this light, the establishment of Mind can be viewed as the creation of a boundary-object that itself constituted this distinction in psychological terms. / Ph. D.

En la actualidad, las agrupaciones sociales se han consolidado no solo por brechas en la sociedad, pues se ha encontrado un nuevo medio de asociacionismo por consumo, principalmente de las surgentes de los productos audiovisuales. Las redes sociales refuerzan este planteamiento de una identidad y los usuarios participan activamente en ellas. / At present, social groups have been consolidated not only by gaps in society, as a new means of associationism has been found for consumption, mainly from the sources of audiovisual products. Social networks reinforce this approach to an identity and users actively participate in them. / Trabajo de investigación