Setting the stageEleonora Paklons, Kristof Smeyers, Kurt Vanhoutte, and Hannah WelslauPART 1: POWER & PERSUASION1 Performing therapeutic magnetism in mid-nineteenth-century BrusselsKaat Wils2 Performances and trajectories of magnetism in nineteenth-century BudapestKornélia Deres3 Performing magnetism in mid-nineteenth-century Italy: The 1856 challenge between Francesco Guidi and Antonio ZanardelliGennaro Ambrosino4 Under the sway of performance: The somnambulist stage of Prudence Bernard and Auguste LassaigneKurt VanhouttePART 2: BELIEF & COSMOLOGY5 Magnetic musings: George Baldwin and the divine traveller in EgyptRobert Rix6 Mediums and magnetisers: The entanglement of spiritism and magnetism and its performative and religious effects in nineteenth-century BelgiumHannah Welslau7 Magnetism and spiritism in the Ottoman Empire (1850s–1870s)Özgür Türesay8 Magnetism, mysticism, and the devilKristof SmeyersPART 3: IDENTITY & AFFECT9 The embodied self: Automatism, power, and gendered autonomyStéphanie Peel10 Entertaining, healing, and fighting death: Madame Plainchant’s magnetic diary, 1851–1854Thibaut Rioult11 Performing magnetism in Charles de Villers’ Le magnétiseur amoureux (1787)Alessandra AloisiPART 4: MEDIA & THE SENSES12 Music and magnetism from Mesmer to the rise of hypnosisOlivier Verhaegen13 Under the lantern’s spell: The use of the magic lantern within magnetismEleonora Paklons14 The magnetic performances of Jules de Rovère: Between automata, prestidigitation, and scientific popularisationAndrea CeciPART 5: THEATRICS & THE ARTS15 “I am going to unwrap the secret of secrets”: Performing the trial of mesmeric and spiritualist authorship in Jean Cocteau’s OrphéeZoë Ghyselinck16 Svengali’s resurrection: Mesmerism, myth, and performanceMiranda Zent17 Choreographing magnetism: The performance of knowledge in the ethereal field of forcesJulia OstwaldBibliographyThe cultural and scientific significance of animal magnetism as performance.The long nineteenth century bears the mark of Anton Mesmer. In a burgeoning media landscape, and in an emerging entertainment culture that fashioned growing numbers of people into audiences, the performative qualities of Mesmer’s magnetic healing techniques came to define magnetism’s cultural power. Shaped by many performers, magnetism flowed into the practices of other practitioners – mentalist, somnambulist, spiritist, hypnotist, mystical, magical and medical. Examining mesmerism as a socially and theatrically embedded phenomenon, Performing Magnetism shows that it was not merely a medical or pseudoscientific practice but a performative and culturally situated one. Drawing on new case studies from Europe, Asia and Northern Africa, the book offers a transnational perspective on nineteenth-century epistemologies and explores how magnetic practices intersected with science, art, popular entertainment, and engagement with the occult. Its interdisciplinary scope will engage readers interested in the cultural history of performance, media, and knowledge.