Literature, Science and the Unconscious: the influence of Mesmerism on Italian Culture (1870-1950)

My aim in this project is to study the intersections between literature, (pseudo)sciences of the mind and the paranormal in Italy during the 19th and 20th centuries. More specifically, the focus will be on literary uses of mesmerism, a therapeutic practise based on magnetism, in Italian literature between the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century. My analysis will focus on three central figures in this context: Gabriele D’Annunzio (1863-1938), Luigi Capuana (1839-1915) and Remigio Zena (1850-1917). The project wants to show how mesmeric imaginary, which is characterized by the three principal branches of magnetism, electricity and somnambulism, generated a metaphorical and rhetorical system which profoundly influenced Italian culture and literary production. I will analyse the core and contextual corpus, exploring the spread of Mesmerism through circulation in periodicals and treatise publications and recostructing all the necessary tools for a complete and exhaustive definition of Mesmerism in Italy, its close links with literature and its social circulation with consequent impact on culture.