Credulity
A Cultural History of US Mesmerism
Credulity
A Cultural History of US Mesmerism
Credulity tells the fascinating story of mesmerism’s spread from the plantations of the French Antilles to the textile factory cities of 1830s New England. As it proliferated along the Eastern seaboard, this occult movement attracted attention from Ralph Waldo Emerson’s circle and ignited the nineteenth-century equivalent of flame wars in the major newspapers. But mesmerism was not simply the last gasp of magic in modern times. Far from being magicians themselves, mesmerists claimed to provide the first rational means of manipulating the credulous human tendencies that had underwritten past superstitions. Now, rather than propping up the powers of oracles and false gods, these tendencies served modern ends such as labor supervision, education, and mediated communication. Neither an atavistic throwback nor a radical alternative, mesmerism was part and parcel of the modern. Credulity offers us a new way of understanding the place of enchantment in secularizing America.
272 pages | 10 halftones | 6 x 9 | © 2018
Class 200: New Studies in Religion
History: American History
Literature and Literary Criticism: American and Canadian Literature
Religion: Comparative Studies and History of Religion, Religion and Literature
Reviews
Awards
American Academy of Religion: AAR Best First Book in the History of Religions
Finalist
Forum for the History of Science in America: Philip J. Pauly Book Prize
Short Listed
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