The sciences of the senses in Romantic literature sight, touch, and vision Laniel-Musitelli, Sophie creator author. text bibliography enk 2026 2026 monographic eng print x, 272 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm "When British Romantic writers came into contact with experimental sciences, they encountered unfamiliar languages, methods and discourses, but they also discovered the experimental practices of modern scientists, their observation devices and their specific ways of sensing the world. The accommodation of the Romantics' senses to these strange sensorialities points to two main tropisms: a tropism towards sight, through prisms or telescopes, and a tropism towards touch, as scientists developed new methods to apprehend their objects through direct contact. The interest these writers showed in the development of the sciences of sensation thus invites a shift in our conception of the interactions between visibility and tactility in the Romantic imagination. What is the status of the 'image' in the Romantic 'imagination'? Is it purely visual? Or is there also something haptic to it? Ultimately, Sophie Musitelli asks, did the Romantics succeed in their attempts at turning touch into a visionary sense?"-- Introduction : the romantic sensorium -- The soft vibrations of touch : Percy Shelley's last poems -- Before our eyes : Erasmus Darwin and William Blake on the origins of the senses -- Eye contact : Thomas De Quincey on sight and touch -- The living eyes of heaven : Anna Letitia Barbauld, William Wordsworth and Percy Shelley on astronomical observation -- Senses of stone : Erasmus Darwin, William Wordsworth and Percy Shelley on the mineral and the sensory -- Other senses than ours : non-human visions from Erasmus Darwin to John Clare -- After the senses : sensory remanence after death in John Keats's Isabella and Mary Shelley's Frankenstein -- Coda : on the sunlit limits of the night. Sophie Musitelli. Includes bibliographical references, notes, and index. Sophie Musitelli is a professor at the University of Lille and Honorary Fellow of the Academic Institute of France (IUF). Romanticism Great Britain History 18th century Romanticism Great Britain History 19th century Science in literature Senses and sensation in literature Romantisme Grande-Bretagne Histoire 18e siècle Romantisme Grande-Bretagne Histoire 19e siècle Sciences dans la littérature Sens et sensations dans la littérature Romanticism History Science in literature Senses and sensation in literature Great Britain 1700-1799 fast 1800-1899 fast PR468.S34 L36 2026 820.9356 Cambridge studies in Romanticism 9781009646789 1009646788 9781009646772 UKMGB 260305 20260811152928.9 in00005792115 eng