Electromagnetism and the Metonymic Imagination

“A fascinating and convincing argument that treats the notion of magnetism in an original way. It will become indispensable reading for cultural historians who are interested in the connections between science and the broader literary or social culture in the eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries.”

—David Bell, author of Real Time: Accelerating Narrative from Balzac to Zola

“With its uncluttered prose and careful explications of thorny debates and esoteric philosophies, Electromagnetism and the Metonymic Imagination brings precision to a sometimes fuzzy field of interdisciplinary inquiry. Literary scholars will learn much from this book’s cogent analyses, not only about the long history of magnetism, from the sixth-century Aetius of Amida to today’s Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) technology, but also about how that history has been deeply intertwined with—and marked by—literary reconceptions of imaginative thought.”

—Andrea Goulet Nineteenth-Century French Studies

“Murphy contributes to ongoing studies on the “electric age” by convincingly demonstrating how electromagnetism drove conceptual and enduring changes in literary and scientific practices. Electromagnetic thinking, including the application of metonymic relations, revealed new ways of ordering and investigating the world. His comparative approach synthesizes electromagnetic analogies across discipline, genre, and national specificities.”

—Kameron Sanzo The British Society for Literature and Science

“By investigating the links between electricity and magnetism, Murphy uncovers forces that bind the natural and human sciences, literature and science, and analysis and creativity.”

—Lindsey Grubbs Poe Studies

Kieran M. Murphy is Associate Professor of French at the University of Colorado, Boulder.