A01=Lee Siegel
anesthetic
Author_Lee Siegel
bengali
calcutta
Category=DNT
Category=JMT
colonialism
eq_anthologies-novellas-short-stories
eq_bestseller
eq_biography-true-stories
eq_fiction
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
experiment
gender
history
hypnosis
hypnotism
india
itinerant
james esdaile
jose-custodio de faria
literature
love
magic spells
medicine
mesmerism
mind and body
narrative
nonfiction
orientalism
pain
past life regressions
physician
politics
priest
reincarnation
religion
salon
science
sex
sexuality
shambaraswami
storytelling
surgery
yoga
Product details
- ISBN 9780226185293
- Weight: 510g
- Dimensions: 16 x 24mm
- Publication Date: 21 Oct 2014
- Publisher: The University of Chicago Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Hardback
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Listen to what I am about to tell you: do not read this book alone. You really shouldn't. In one of the most playful experiments ever put between two covers, every other section of Trance-Migrations prescribes that you read its incantatory tales out loud to a lover, friend, or confidant, in order to hypnotize in preparation for Lee Siegel's exploration of an enchanting India. To read and hear this book is to experience a particular kind of relationship, and that's precisely the point: hypnotism, the book will demonstrate, is an essential aspect of our most significant relationships, an inherent dimension of love, religion, medicine, politics, and literature, a fundamental dynamic between lover and beloved, deity and votary, physician and patient, ruler and subject, and, indeed, reader and listener. Even if you can't read this with a partner - and I stress that you certainly ought to - you will still be in rich company.
There is Shambaraswami, an itinerant magician, hypnotist, and storyteller to whom villagers turn for spells that will bring them wealth or love; Jose-Custodio de Faria, a Goan priest hypnotizing young and beautiful women in nineteenth-century Parisian salons; James Esdaile, a Scottish physician for the East India Company in Calcutta, experimenting on abject Bengalis with mesmerism as a surgical anesthetic; and Lee Siegel, a writer traveling in India to learn all that he can about hypnosis, yoga, past life regressions, colonialism, orientalism, magic spells, and, above all, the power of story. And then there is you: descending through these histories - these tales within tales, trances within trances, dreams within dreams - toward a place where the distinctions between reverie and reality dissolve. Here the world within the book and that in which the book is read come startlingly together. It's one of the most creative works we have ever published, a dazzling combination of literary prowess, scholarly erudition, and psychological exploration - all tempered by warm humor and a sharp wit. It is informing, entertaining, and, above all, mesmerizing.
Lee Siegel is professor of religious studies at the University of Hawaii. He is the author of many books, including Love in a Dead Language, Who Wrote the Book of Love?, and Love and the Incredibly Old Man, all published by the University of Chicago Press.
