{"id":1120,"date":"2016-03-16T12:52:17","date_gmt":"2016-03-16T12:52:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bars.ac.uk\/blog\/?p=1120"},"modified":"2016-03-16T12:52:17","modified_gmt":"2016-03-16T12:52:17","slug":"five-questions-markus-iseli-on-thomas-de-quincey-and-the-cognitive-unconscious","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bars.ac.uk\/blog\/?p=1120","title":{"rendered":"Five Questions: Markus Iseli on Thomas De Quincey and the Cognitive Unconscious"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Markus<\/a><\/p>\n

Markus Iseli holds a PhD from the University of Neuch\u00e2tel, Switzerland.\u00a0 He has recevied a Swiss National Science Foundation grant in support of his research; his work on the cognitive unconscious in the nineteenth-century context has also earned him the Henry-E.-Sigerist-Prize from the Swiss Society for the History of Medicine and Sciences.\u00a0 He has published journal articles on his work in European Romantic Review<\/a><\/em> and Romanticism<\/a><\/em>.\u00a0 His first monograph, Thomas De Quincey and the Cognitive Unconscious<\/a><\/em>, which we discuss below, was published by Palgrave Macmillan last year as the first book in the new Palgrave Studies in Literature, Science and Medicine<\/a> series.<\/p>\n

1) What first got you interested in Thomas De Quincey?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I discovered De Quincey only towards the end of my MA.\u00a0 A couple of his essays from the\u00a0Reminscences<\/i>\u00a0were on my reading list for the final exam.\u00a0 He hadn\u2019t been on any of the syllabi before, so I didn\u2019t know much about him at the time, but the essays\u00a0roused my interest.\u00a0 Eventually I stumbled over the Confessions<\/i>.\u00a0 I began reading it during the preparations for my finals though it wasn\u2019t on the list and rushed through it.\u00a0 As it had happened to many other people before me, I was fascinated by his prose and, of course, by his story.\u00a0 The autobiographical endeavour was initially at the core of my interest.<\/p>\n

2) You select as your epigraph a quotation by J. Allan Hobson: ‘Let us break down the barriers between science and the humanities’. \u00a0What do you think are the main benefits of pulling down\u00a0these barriers?<\/strong><\/p>\n

There is a great deal that can be learnt on both sides of the barriers.\u00a0 Hobson is a good example of what scientists can learn from the humanities.\u00a0 My experience, of course, is mainly that of the opposite direction.\u00a0 Six years ago I would never have thought that I would say this one day, simply because I didn\u2019t know much about the other side.\u00a0 However, the more I read about the scientific approach to literary texts, the stronger became my conviction about the importance of that interdisciplinary perspective.\u00a0 In literary studies, the barriers are, I think, to a large extent a question of sensibilities.\u00a0 Cognitive science, for example, is not just about brain scans with blue and red areas that supposedly reveal the blueprint of what it means to be human, to which it has been reduced by some literary critics.\u00a0 The insights may be limited, but they reveal exciting facts about the way we think and feel about things, and that\u2019s what a lot of literature is all about.\u00a0 This knowledge provides new, fruitful perspectives on literary texts.<\/p>\n

Furthermore, today we know that science had an important influence on literary texts in the nineteenth century.\u00a0 The many friendships between philosophers, writers of all strands, and scientists, who all profited from the knowledge of their peers from other fields, were crucial.\u00a0 So, if modern science allows us to understand the science of the past, it also allows us to understand literary texts that make use of the scientific discourse of this period.\u00a0 Breaking down the barriers allows us to come to a more complete understanding of a literary period, for which the nineteenth century is exemplary.\u00a0 In more concrete terms, modern theories of the cognitive unconscious helped me understand nineteenth-century notions of the unconscious.\u00a0 They sharpened my sense for instances that don\u2019t fit into the literary theories of the past decades and provided a theoretical framework.<\/p>\n

3) In your introduction, you make a persuasive case for many studies of Romantic psychology framing it principally in opposition to Freud. \u00a0How do you think we can benefit by considering\u00a0Romantic notions of the unconscious in their own terms?<\/strong><\/p>\n

My endeavour is finding out what people in the early nineteenth century, in particular De Quincey, thought about the workings of the mind and the unconscious and how this might change our understanding of their literary output.\u00a0 As I explain in my introduction, the psychoanalytic approach in literary studies fails to do this because it does not take into account historical aspects.\u00a0 This, however, is indispensable to make claims about the theories of an author or to talk about the rise of an idea in a specific historical period.\u00a0 It was amazing to find out about nineteenth-century theories of the unconscious that are so different to the theories that were used in the critical discourse of the past decades.\u00a0 The irony, of course, is that I also needed a modern theory, that of the cognitive unconscious, to be able to make sense of Romantic theories of the unconscious.\u00a0 However, I tried very hard not simply to impose the modern theories and to make nineteenth-century theories fit our modern views.\u00a0 Theories of the cognitive unconscious guide my readings and analyses up to a certain point, but the claims I make for Romantic theories of the unconscious are also backed up by thorough historical research.\u00a0 The award I received from the\u00a0Swiss Society for the History of Medicine and Science\u00a0speaks in favour of this, I hope.<\/p>\n

4) To what extent were De Quincey’s notions about the unconscious particular to him, and to what extent were they drawn from ideas circulating more widely?<\/strong><\/p>\n

This is a crucial question in my research and my opinion changed considerably during my research.\u00a0 At first I thought that De Quincey was on to something really new.\u00a0 The more I looked at other authors, scientific ideas, and cultural movements, however, the more I realised that he was articulating his version of something that many other people were contemplating and investigating around the same time.\u00a0 This insight does not diminish his achievements, though.\u00a0 His originality lies in the way he picks up various notions that were in the air at that time, in the way he reworks them, and in the way he articulates the resulting ideas through his famous impassioned prose.\u00a0 Furthermore, one of De Quincey\u2019s achievements is the promulgation of these ideas, in particular that of the cognitive unconscious.<\/p>\n

One point in this respect that I would love to be able to explain in more detail is the relationship between De Quincey, the scientist Thomas Laycock, and the philosopher Sir William Hamilton.\u00a0 They published almost the same ideas in almost the same terms at almost the same time.\u00a0 Is is clear \u2013 from direct and indirect evidence \u2013 that this was no coincidence.\u00a0 But what was the direct influence, in which direction did it go, how impactful was it, and did they share the same basis for their theories?\u00a0 I discovered some exciting links but I can only give tentative answers to these question for the lack of evidence.\u00a0 In any case, it shows that De Quincey\u2019s ideas were not wholly new.\u00a0 They were the result of that time and De Quincey considerably helped shape the notion of the unconscious.<\/p>\n

5) Which Romantic-period writers beyond De Quincey do you think would be particularly suited for reconsideration in light of the issues you raise in your book?<\/strong><\/p>\n

There is a range of authors that would be interesting to look at in this light, not only from that period.\u00a0 Going back a little further in time, Erasmus Darwin comes to mind, who articulated similar ideas about the unconscious.\u00a0 Of course the canonical authors, such as Wordsworth and Coleridge deserve attention in this respect. Thomas Carlyle needs closer attention, too.\u00a0 His essay ‘Characteristics’ is full of allusions to what we now call the productive unconscious.\u00a0 I hope future research will expand this list.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Markus Iseli holds a PhD from the University of Neuch\u00e2tel, Switzerland.\u00a0 He has recevied a Swiss National Science Foundation grant in support of his research; his work on the cognitive… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pagelayer_contact_templates":[],"_pagelayer_content":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bars.ac.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1120"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bars.ac.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bars.ac.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bars.ac.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bars.ac.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1120"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.bars.ac.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1120\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1130,"href":"https:\/\/www.bars.ac.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1120\/revisions\/1130"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bars.ac.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1120"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bars.ac.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1120"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bars.ac.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1120"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}