Mesmerism and the End of the Enlightenment in France

Robert Darnton is the author of numerous award-winning books on French cultural history, including The Revolutionary Temper. A MacArthur Fellow, chevalier in the Légion d’honneur, and winner of the National Humanities Medal and the National Book Critics Circle Award, he is Carl H. Pforzheimer University Professor and Director of the University Library, Emeritus, at Harvard University.

A fascinating study of the effects that the theories of the notorious Viennese physician, Franz Mesmer, had upon social and political thinkers during the two decades preceding the French Revolution. This book is a skillful exploration of the various psychological factors that made mesmerism a widely accepted attitude…[The book] will interest literary scholars as well as historians since mesmerism is examined as a phenomenon that bequeathed an attitude that found its expression in the writings of the preromantics and the romantics.

• 1. Mesmerism and Popular Science 2. The Mesmerist Movement 3. The Radical Strain in Mesmerism 4. Mesmerism as a Radical Political Theory 5. From Mesmer to Hugo 6. Conclusion Bibliographical Note Appendix 1. Mesmer's Propositions Appendix 2. The Milieu of Amateur Scientists in Paris Appendix 3. The Societe de l'Harmonie Universelle Appendix 4. Bergasse's Lectures on Mesmerism Appendix 5. The Emblem and Textbook of the Societes de l'Harmonie Appendix 6. An Antimesmerist View Appendix 7. French Passages Translated in the Text Index