Bellies, bowels and entrails in the eighteenth century
Rebecca Anne Barr, Sylvie Kleiman-Lafton, and Sophie Vasset
Abstract
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 cont ... More
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.
Keywords:
history of medicine,
viscera,
bowels,
urban history,
literature,
waste,
enlightenment,
art history
Bibliographic Information
| Print publication date: 2018 |
Print ISBN-13: 9781526127051 |
| Published to Manchester Scholarship Online: January 2019 |
DOI:10.7228/manchester/9781526127051.001.0001 |
Authors
Affiliations are at time of print publication.
Rebecca Anne Barr, editor
Lecturer above the bar at the National University of Ireland, Galway
Sylvie Kleiman-Lafton, editor
MaÃtre de conférences at Université Paris 8
Sophie Vasset, editor
Maître de conférences at Université Paris-Diderot
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