Sleepwalking, subjectivity and the nervous body in Eighteenth-Century Britain

Handley, Sasha (2012) Sleepwalking, subjectivity and the nervous body in Eighteenth-Century Britain. Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies, 35 (3). pp. 305-323. ISSN 1754-0194

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Abstract

This article offers an in-depth study of sleepwalking in the long eighteenth century. It explores how and why the physical condition of sleepwalking was conceptually transformed into a modish nervous disorder that was central to explorations of the human mind, imagination and personal identity in the final decades of the century. This cultural revaluation of sleepwalking, or ‘somnambulism’ as it was increasingly termed, is situated within the context of late seventeenth- and eighteenth-century medical and philosophical thought surrounding the physical act of sleep and its disorders, and within the cults of sensibility and Romanticism.

Item Type:	Article
Uncontrolled Keywords:	sleepwalking, somnambulism, mind, identity, sensibility, nerves, Romanticism, magnetism
Subjects:	C800 Psychology V100 History by period V300 History by topic
Depositing User:	Helen Pattison
Date Deposited:	10 Jul 2012 15:25
Last Modified:	10 Oct 2019 16:05
URI:	http://nrl.northumbria.ac.uk/id/eprint/8079

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