William Wetmore Story/en
- Note documentation
- * Primary source: Historical essay included in the anthology Marco Paret (ed.), Hypnotic Techniques of Fascination, NLP International Ltd, 2011 (part III) — based on a work by William Wetmore Story, enriched in some points by dr. Paret (explicit statement in the preface).
- * Drive sources: Hypnotic Techniques of Fascination folder
- * Status: DOCUMENTED (direct reading of the final section of the 2011 volume); provisional page — to be expanded when Story's original text is located (it was originally published under a different title at the end of the 19th century).
William Wetmore Story (Salem, Massachusetts, February 12, 1819 – Vallombrosa, Italy, October 7, 1895) was an American sculptor, poet, essayist, and jurist, son of jurist Joseph Story (Justice of the US Supreme Court). He moved to Italy in 1856, lived in Rome until his death, where he was a central figure in the Anglo-American community and developed a notable sculptural output (his famous Cleopatra is housed at the Metropolitan Museum in New York).
For the wiki cluster Fascination of the Paret Method, Story is relevant for his historical essay on fascination as a documented natural phenomenon — an essay that Marco Paret included and enriched in the 2011 anthology Hypnotic Techniques of Fascination (Paret, Atkinson, Story 2011).
The essay on fascination
Story's text on fascination, reproduced in the 2011 Paret anthology (part III), deals with:
- The phenomenon of animal fascination as a natural reality documented by naturalists (African snakes fascinating birds, lions — Dr. Livingstone's episode, crocodiles and antelopes)
- Fascination in ancient traditions (Egypt, Greece — Medusa as a metaphorical transposition, Rome)
- Traces in sacred texts of various traditions
- Continuity with 19th-century European magnetic practice
Story wrote as an Anglo-American scholar residing in Italy, in the full era of the great European magnetic tradition (Lafontaine, Donato, Luys) — of which he was almost certainly aware due to his Italian cultural placement and contacts with the European intellectual environment.
Specificity of Story in Paret 2011
[VERIFIED preface of the anthology] Paret explicitly states:
«a paper on the history of fascination based on a work of William Wetmore Story (enriched in some points by dr. Paret)»
Therefore, Story's text in the anthology is not the integral reproduction of Story's historical work, but a reworking by Paret that adopts its argumentative structure and set of examples, integrating them with his own observations. The distinction between what is Story's and what is Paret's requires comparison with the original text, currently bibliographically unidentified (Story does not appear to have an independent book on fascination; more likely it was a scattered essay or a section of a larger work).
Page status
Provisional page. To be expanded when:
- Story's original text is identified (bibliographic verification in his complete writings)
- It becomes possible to precisely distinguish Story's original contributions from Paret's 2011 enrichments
Documentation status
| Statement | Source | Verification |
|---|---|---|
| Basic biography William Wetmore Story (1819-1895, sculptor, Rome) | general encyclopedia, Dictionary of American Biography | DOCUMENTED |
| Historical essay on fascination attributed to Story | explicit statement in the preface of the 2011 Paret anthology | DOCUMENTED (the attribution) |
| Story's original text on fascination | not yet identified | PENDING (requires bibliographic research in Story's writings) |
| Paret's original contributions compared to Story's text | not yet analytically distinguished | PENDING (requires comparison with original text) |
Primary sources
- Marco Paret (ed.), William W. Atkinson, William W. Story, Hypnotic Techniques of Fascination, NLP International Ltd, 2011, part III
- VM ISI-CNV text extraction: final section of hyp_fasc.txt, l. 5300+