Motyw mesmeryzmu w literaturze romantycznej
The motif of mesmerism in Romantic literature

Author(s): Julian Strzałkowski
Subject(s): Language and Literature Studies, Literary Texts, Studies of Literature, Philology, Theory of Literature
Published by: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Śląskiego
Summary/Abstract: The article concerns the notion of animal magnetism in selected prose of Polish Romanticism. The first part focuses on the reception of mesmerism in the 19th century and the influence of Mesmer’s doctrine on the literature of this epoch. The second part presents an analysis of two short stories: Siła woli [The Will Power] by Józef Bohdan Dziekoński and Lekarz magnetyczny [The Magnetic Doctor] by Józef Dzierzkowski. The way in which mesmerism and its followers are shown by the authors is presented and confronted with the nineteenth century reality. The main aim of the article is to demonstrate the influence of the references to Mesmer’s theory on the tragic quality of the discussed texts.

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