Bellies, bowels and entrails in the eighteenth century

2018 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Art History ◽  
Medical Humanities ◽  
Eighteenth Century Literature ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
Inner Organs ◽  
Material History ◽  
New Research ◽  
Long Eighteenth Century ◽  
The Brain

This collection of essays seeks to complicate the notion of the supremacy of the brain as the key organ of the Enlightenment, by focusing on the workings of the bowels and viscera that obsessed writers and thinkers during the long eighteenth century. These inner organs and their mysterious processes of digestion acted as complicating counterpoints to politeness and modes of refined sociability, drawing attention to the deeper, more fundamental, workings of the self. In a form of ‘history from below’, the volume situates the period’s preoccupations with waste, dirt, and detritus within the context of cultures seeking to understand their material dynamics. The collection presents new research on eighteenth-century literature, urban and material history; art history; and the medical humanities. Focussing on bellies, bowels, and entrails, both as recurring tropes and as objects of medical and scientific knowledge, these essays explore the manifold conceptions and understandings of the viscera. This volume analyses how the period probed their inner depths to try and incorporate, rather than simply reject, their material essence.

scholarly journals Cross-sensory experiences and the enlightenment: music synesthesia in context

2019 ◽  
Vol 19 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eduardo Sola Chagas Lima
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Visual Arts ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Eighteenth Century Literature ◽  
Sensory Experiences ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
Scientific Report ◽  
Long Eighteenth Century ◽  
Century Thought ◽  
Taste And Smell

ABSTRACT: This study contemplates cross-sensory experiences as represented in late eighteenth-century thought, prior to George Sachs’s description of synesthesia in 1812. Sachs’s medical dissertation is now considered to be the first convincing scientific report of synesthesia in literature. Yet, less objective historical instances of cross-sensory experiences are not new to music, the visual arts, and poetry. Since these instances are difficult to assess on the part of modern disciplines (including musicology) due to their subjective nature, references to cross-sensory experiences prior to this date are either overlooked or simply ignored. The Medieval and Renaissance understandings of multisensory associations, deriving from natural science and cosmology, gradually gave way to rationalized discussions based on mathematics, physics, and practical experimentations as time elapsed. In eighteenth-century literature, allusions to sound-colour parallels enjoy special attention in the writings of Voltaire, Rousseau, Diderot, among others. In discussing the validity of these associations and their mechanisms, some authors extended these correspondences to other senses as well: touch, taste, and smell. This research is rooted in a historical survey of Enlightenment approaches to multisensory experiences—along with their priority for reason—discussing to which extent they are strictly ‘scientific,’ since the long eighteenth century still witnessed the coexistence of natural, cosmological, and philosophical readings of cross-sensory analogies. It also inquires whether Enlightenment thought established a philosophical foundation for initial investigations on music synesthesia. Finally, this study searches for a place for Sachs’s dissertation among Enlightenment debates—the philosophical and historical context that afforded its conception.

The Disaster Artist of the long eighteenth century

2019 ◽  
Vol 49 (2) ◽  
pp. 91-107
Author(s):  
D. J. Moores
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Subject Matter ◽  
Critical Analysis ◽  
The Body ◽  
Literary Studies ◽  
Eighteenth Century Literature ◽  
Long Eighteenth Century ◽  
Century Literature

This essay is a discussion of three anonymous novels about happiness from the long eighteenth century – The Vale of Felicity (1791), Benignity (1818) and Edward (1820) – all of which seem to be written by the same author, as they exhibit striking similarities not only in subject matter but also in their aristocratic perspective on happiness, one wholly dependent upon pecuniary means. What is more, they exhibit the same artistic deficiencies, particularly in wooden characters and the rather poor handling of pacing, plotting, obtrusive didacticism and complication. The opening discussion situates the novels in the context of the abundant eighteenth-century literature on happiness, while the body of the essay is a critical analysis of the three narratives in terms of their various genres (epistolary, sentimental, didactic, Bildungsroman, circular journey, identikit, picaresque) and eighteenth-century ideas on Stoicism, Epicureanism, and Christian charity. The peroration and conclusion are a reflection upon the notion of happiness itself and how it has been ill-received in literary studies. The essay represents the first analysis of its kind, since there is no extant, substantial criticism on any of these novels.

scholarly journals Witchcraft and the Enlightenment: Reinterpreting the Witch in the Eighteenth Century

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Janet Handley
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Belief Systems ◽  
Literary Texts ◽  
Non Fiction ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
Master's Thesis ◽  
The Witch ◽  
New Research ◽  
Point Of Intersection

New Research Idea: Representing a point of intersection between the natural, the supernatural, law, fact, and fiction, witchcraft makes an excellent case for studying changes in the belief systems during the eighteenth century. Witchcraft remained a topic of intense discussion and heated debates long after it ceased being officially treated as a crime. The period is extraordinarily rich in literary material concerning witchcraft, from pamphlets, essays, news sheets and legal histories to pantomimes, poems, chapbooks, and at least one novel, yet these have so far received relatively sparse academic attention. In order to obtain a deeper knowledge and understanding of the development and the major and minor changes in the discourse on witchcraft during the 1700s, the proposed project analyses its manifestations in English and Scottish non-fiction and literary texts spanning the above-mentioned forms and genres. Exploring the mediation of texts/narratives/stories and examining the sociocultural considerations of “how and why stories are re-worked in different historical and cultural contexts” (Elliott: 149), the proposed project studies how the various texts enter into dialogues with each other and how they play into other concerns. In doing so it gives particular attention to shifts in the representations of the witch figure, its manifestations, function, and voice, and its interrelationship with gender politics. The proposed study builds upon and expands my previous research into the seventeenth century: “Scripting the Witch: Voice, Gender and Power in The Witch of Edmonton (Rowley, Dekker and Ford 1621) and Witchcraft (Baillie 1836)” (Master’s Thesis Nov 2016 UiT).  

‘The Age of Louis XIV’: Frederick the Great and French Ways of War*

2019 ◽  
Vol 38 (1) ◽  
pp. 24-46
Author(s):  
Adam L Storring
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Cultural Influence ◽  
The Sun ◽  
Louis Xiv ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
French Military ◽  
History Of ◽  
Long Eighteenth Century ◽  
The Military

Abstract This article demonstrates that the military ideas of King Frederick the Great of Prussia up to the Seven Years War (1756–1763) were primarily inspired by France, and particularly by the towering figure of King Louis XIV. It examines the intellectual inspirations for Frederick’s military ideas, showing that French military influence reflected the strength of French cultural influence in the long eighteenth century and the importance of Louis XIV as a model for monarchical self-representation. Frederick’s famous personal command of his armies reflected the Enlightenment concept of the ‘great man’ (grand homme), but Frederick thereby sought primarily to outdo the Sun King, whom Voltaire had criticized for merely accompanying his armies while his generals won battles for him. The example of Frederick thus demonstrates that not only rulers but also enlightened philosophers often looked backwards toward older monarchical examples. Frederick sought to create his own ‘Age of Louis XIV’ in the military sphere by imitating the great French generals of the Sun King. Frederick’s famous outflanking manoeuvres followed the example of famous French generals, reflecting the practice of the more mobile armies of the mid-seventeenth century. Frederick used French practice to justify his attacks with the bayonet, and his ‘short and lively’ wars reflected French strategic traditions. The evidence of French influence on Frederick seriously challenges concepts of a ‘German Way of War’, and indeed of supposed national ‘ways of war’ in general, emphasizing the need for a transnational approach to the history of military thought.

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