New publication : "Performing Magnetism: The Theatrics of Persuasion in the Long Nineteenth Century "

References: Paklons, Eleonora, and others, Performing Magnetism: The Theatrics of Persuasion in the Long Nineteenth Century (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 2026)
DOI: https://doi.org/10.2307/jj.37198840.13

Summary: The cultural and scientific significance of animal magnetism as performance. The long nineteenth century bears the mark of Anton Mesmer. In a burgeoning media landscape, and in an emerging entertainment culture that fashioned growing numbers of people into audiences, the performative qualities of Mesmer’s magnetic healing techniques came to define magnetism’s cultural power. Shaped by many performers, magnetism flowed into other practices – mentalist, somnambulist, spiritist, hypnotist, mystical, magical and medical. Examining mesmerism as a socially and theatrically embedded phenomenon, Performing Magnetism shows that it was not merely a medical or pseudoscientific practice but a performative and culturally situated one. Drawing on new case studies from Europe, Asia and Northern Africa, the book offers a transnational perspective on nineteenth-century epistemologies and explores how magnetic practices intersected with science, art, popular entertainment, and engagement with the occult. Its interdisciplinary scope will engage readers interested in the cultural history of performance, media, and knowledge. Setting the stage Eleonora Paklons, Kristof Smeyers, Kurt Vanhoutte, and Hannah Welslau.

Table of contents : 

PART 1: POWER & PERSUASION
1 Performing therapeutic magnetism in mid-nineteenth-century Brussels Kaat Wils
2 Performances and trajectories of magnetism in nineteenth-century Budapest Kornélia Deres
3 Performing magnetism in mid-nineteenth-century Italy: The 1856 challenge between Francesco Guidi and Antonio Zanardelli Gennaro Ambrosino
4 Under the sway of performance: The somnambulist stage of Prudence Bernard and Auguste Lassaigne Kurt Vanhoutte

PART 2: BELIEF & COSMOLOGY
5 Magnetic musings: George Baldwin and the divine traveller in Egypt Robert Rix
6 Mediums and magnetisers: The entanglement of spiritism and magnetism and its performative and religious effects in nineteenth-century Belgium Hannah Welslau
7 Magnetism and spiritism in the Ottoman Empire (1850s–1870s) Özgür Türesay
8 Magnetism, mysticism, and the devil Kristof Smeyers

PART 3: IDENTITY & AFFECT
9 The embodied self: Automatism, power, and gendered autonomy Stéphanie Peel
10 Entertaining, healing, and fighting death: Madame Plainchant’s magnetic diary, 1851–1854 Thibaut Rioult
11 Performing magnetism in Charles de Villers’ Le magnétiseur amoureux (1787) Alessandra Aloisi

PART 4: MEDIA & THE SENSES
12 Music and magnetism from Mesmer to the rise of hypnosis Olivier Verhaegen
13 Under the lantern’s spell: The use of the magic lantern within magnetism Eleonora Paklons
14 The magnetic performances of Jules de Rovère: Between automata, prestidigitation, and scientific popularisation Andrea Ceci

PART 5: THEATRICS & THE ARTS
15 “I am going to unwrap the secret of secrets”: Performing the trial of mesmeric and spiritualist authorship in Jean Cocteau’s Orphée Zoë Ghyselinck
16 Svengali’s resurrection: Mesmerism, myth, and performance Miranda Zent
17 Choreographing magnetism: The performance of knowledge in the ethereal field of forces Julia Ostwald Bibliography

Link: https://www.jstor.org/content/oa_book_edited/jj.37198840