The Outward Mind argues that Victorian writers and scientists developed new and controversial accounts of aesthetic experience by returning attention to the human body and to the materiality of artworks. In contrast with accounts of the period that have understood aesthetic judgment as a mode of individual expression or self-cultivation, the book recovers a materialist science of aesthetics in which the experience of beauty was seen as a moment of unconscious contact between the human nervous system and the materiality of an art object. Analyzing archives related to literary figures such as Jo ... More

The Outward Mind argues that Victorian writers and scientists developed new and controversial accounts of aesthetic experience by returning attention to the human body and to the materiality of artworks. In contrast with accounts of the period that have understood aesthetic judgment as a mode of individual expression or self-cultivation, the book recovers a materialist science of aesthetics in which the experience of beauty was seen as a moment of unconscious contact between the human nervous system and the materiality of an art object. Analyzing archives related to literary figures such as John Ruskin, William Morris, and Walter Pater as well as biologists and psychologists such as Alexander Bain, Herbert Spencer, and Vernon Lee, the book shows that scientists and literary intellectuals shared a project of turning the mind “outward” into a surrounding world of objects and things. Returning to this cross-disciplinary tradition of physiological aesthetics suggests that contemporary engagements between the humanities and sciences would benefit from attending more closely to a history in which scientific approaches to aesthetics were embraced. The book is organized by five categories through which Victorian thought gains purchase on key terms in contemporary critical practice: form, response, materiality, practice, and empathy. At a moment when neuroaesthetics, affect theory, new materialisms, and quantitative cultural analysis are increasingly drawing on the scientific method, The Outward Mind offers a literary and cultural history that shows how science and aesthetics have long been intertwined.