Enlightenment and Pathology - Sensibility in Literature Medicine of Eighteenth Century France

Informationen zum Autor Anne C. Vila is associate professor of French at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her previous book was a translation of The Quadrille of Gender: Casanova's Memoirs by Francois Roustang. Klappentext Vila shows that the multiple junctures between the body and the mind promoted a steady commerce between science and the salons. In Enlightenment and Pathology Anne Vila surveys the various understandings of sensibility that passed back and forth between different professional modes of discourse in eighteenth-century France. The thrills of the nervous system, the delectations of taste, and the pangs of the heart mattered as much in the laboratory as in literature. Vila shows that the multiple junctures between the body and the mind promoted a steady commerce between science and the salons. Vila looks deeply into that commerce and its changing purposes in the course of the eighteenth century. She examines key works by influential authors--Diderot, Rousseau, de Laclos, Sade--to determine the significance of the sentimentality which they both absorbed and helped to define. But she also steps beyond belles lettres and investigates the medical, biological, and philosophical literature of the period to reveal deep and continuous interrelations. If moods are as contagious as colds, and wickedness is as debilitating as a bad diet, the inquiries of the eighteenth century still have much to tell.

Product details

• Authors: Anne C. Vila, Anne C. (Pickard-Bascom Professor of French Vila
• Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 18.03.1998
• EAN: 9780801858093
• ISBN: 978-0-8018-5809-3
• No. of pages: 408
• Subjects: Fiction > Poetry, drama; Humanities, art, music > Linguistics and literary studies > Romance linguistics / literary studies; Natural sciences, medicine, IT, technology > Medicine; French, Medicine, MEDICAL / General, LITERARY CRITICISM / European / French, LITERARY CRITICISM / Modern / General, 18th century, c 1700 to c 1799, Literary studies: c 1500 to c 1800, Literary studies: c 1600 to c 1800, C 1700 To C 1800, Medicine and Nursing