Timpano reviews the visual manifestation of the arc de cercle—a specific movement in hysterical attacks coined by Jean-Martin Charcot in the 1870s—in order to better comprehend how and why hysteria was not the invention of nineteenth-century French medicine, but rather, a theatrically expressive “attitude” identifiable throughout the visual and performing arts from the Early Modern period to the present era. His research demonstrates that any distinction between “dramatic swooning” and “hysterical arcs” was largely an arbitrary division for artists and theater directors working from the Baroque era to the contemporary scene. Instead, the codification of the arc de cercle by modern medicine in the late nineteenth century was, in truth, a rather late attempt to explain a long-standing tradition of hysterical expressions that had already found power and meaning in the realm of the arts.
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