Contents

Acknowledgments

A Note on Translations

Introduction

1.The Emptying of Gesture: Neurology and the British Romantic Stage

2.From Gestures to Nerves: Woyzeck and the Barbel Fish

3.The Nervous System: Melodrama, Railway Trauma, and Systemic Risk

4.The Inner Drama of the Body: Wagner’s Neural Aesthetics

5.Theater’s Revenge: Charcot and the Grand Guignol

6.The Prison House of Nerves: Zola and Strindberg

Conclusion: Nervous Hermeneutics and the Theater of Cruelty

WORKS CITED

INDEX