Body and Text in the Eighteenth Century
Published on 1. September 1994
Book
Paperback/Softback
368 pages
978-0-8047-2268-1 (ISBN)
Description
Twelve scholars from the fields of English, French, and German literature here examine the complex ways in which the human body becomes the privileged semiotic model through which eighteenth-century culture defines its political and conceptual centers. In making clear that the deployment of the body varies tremendously depending on what is meant by the 'human body', the essays draw on popular literature, poetics and aesthetics, garden architecture, physiognomy, beauty manuals, pornography and philosophy, as well as on canonical works in the genres of the novel and the drama.
Reviews / Votes
"These theoretically sophisticated essays offer examples of the more innovative and exacting styles of scholarly investigation being practiced today: from cultural studies to deconstructive reading, from historical study to close reading, from theoretically inflected feminism to psychoanalytic studies."-William B. Warner, SUNY, BuffaloMore details
Language
English
Place of publication
Palo Alto
United States
Target group
College/higher education
Professional and scholarly
Illustrations
Illustrations, facsim.
Dimensions
Height: 228 mm
Width: 152 mm
Thickness: 21 mm
Weight
490 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-8047-2268-1 (9780804722681)
Copyright in bibliographic data is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or its licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Content
Introduction: body and text in the eighteenth century Veronica Kelly and Dorothea von Mucke; Part I. Discursive Shifts and Realignments: 1. The limping woman and the public sphere Elizabeth Heckendorn Cook; 2. Wit's breaks Neil Saccamano; 3. Lock's eyes, Swift's spectacles Veronica Kelly; Part II. Technologies of Seeing: 4. The charm'd eye Peter de Bolla; 5. Overloaded portraits: the excesses of character and countenance Deidre Lynch; 6. Cosmetic poetics: coloring faces in the eighteenth century Tassie Gwilliam; Part III. The Limits of the Body: 7. The powers of horror and the magic of euphemism in Lessing's Laokoon and How the Ancients Represented Death Dorothea von Mucke; 8. Morphisms of the phantasmatic body: Goethe's The Sorrows of Young Werther David E. Wellbery; 9. Deconstruction of the hermeneutical body: Kleist and the discourse of classical aesthetics Helmut J. Schneider; Part IV. Unnatural Bodies: 10. Goethe's Clavigo: the body as an unorthographic sign Susan Gustafson; 11. Disfiguring the victim's body in Sade's Justine Thomas Dipiero; 12. Mrs Robinson and the masquerade of womanliness Chris Cullens; Notes; Index.