Bodily Pain: Romantic Neurology and Frankenstein

From a perspective of cognitive historicism, this paper explores the issue of bodily pain in the Romantic period. Cognitive science crosses the boundaries of psychology, philosophy, and even artificial intelligence in hopes of understanding the workings of the human mind. Alan Richardson draws on cognitive science and literary studies and uses the perspective of cognitive historicism to further understand English Romantic literature. His research therefore provides a new lens for Romantic studies. In terms of Richardson's concept of ＂neural Romanticism,＂ the research focuses on bodily pain so as to analyze how British intellectuals during the Romantic period understood the subtle relationship between nerves, electricity, pain and the brain. First of all, this paper will revisit English Romantic neurology in a bid to understand how the intellectuals thought of bodily pain. The Italian physiologist Luigi Galvani focused on animal electricity and launched a groundbreaking study. Integrated with electricity, nerves and muscles, his research deeply helped with neural studies in Romanticism and influenced scientific circles in Britain, for example Volta and Davy. Due to this ethos, English Romantic poets (Coleridge, Shelley) further pondered on the relationship between nerves and the mind and particularly focused their works on bodily pain. Secondly, the paper aims to explore experiences of bodily pain by rereading Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, in particular the 1831 version of the novel. Different from the 1818 version, the author mentioned galvanism in the Introduction and the 1831 text. The project particularly examines Mary Shelley's narration of bodily pain and its connection with perspectives of neurology.