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.