How did doctors argue in eighteenth-century medical pamphlet wars? How literary, or clinical, is Diderot's depiction of mad nuns? What is at stake in the account of a cataract operation at the beginning of Jean-Paul's novel Hesperus? In this pioneering volume, contributors extend current research at the intersection of medicine and literature by examining the overlapping narrative strategies in the writings of both novelists and doctors. Focusing on a wide variety of sources, an interdisciplinary team of researchers explores the nature and function of narration as an underlying principle of such writing. From a reading of correspondence between doctors as a means of continuing professional education, to the use of inoculation as a plotting device, or an examination of Diderot's physiological approach to mental illness in La Religieuse, contributors highlight: how doctors exploited rhetorical techniques in both clinical writing and correspondence with patients. how novelists incorporated medical knowledge into their narratives. how models such as case-histories or narrative poetry were adopted and transformed in both fictional and actual medical writing. how these narrative strategies shaped the way in which doctors, patients and illnesses were represented and perceived in the eighteenth century.

In an era when both Church and State assigned gender roles and defined sexual practices in terms of male/female, lawful/illicit, Sade's extensive accounts of sexual activity were categorized as deviant, prurient or provocative. William F. Edmiston explores how Sade's unique challenge to sexual, moral and social taboos anticipates the discourses of queer theory. Following an overview of queer theory, Edmiston examines the categories of sex, gender and sexuality as treated in some of Sade's best- and lesser-known works. He demonstrates the extent to which Sade erodes the boundaries of sexual opposition through discourses justifying rather than illegitimizing 'unlawful' sex. The author reveals the coexistence of two competing discourses on sexuality: a proclivity that cannot be eradicated, and a habit that one can choose to adopt. This pioneering re-reading culminates with an examination of how recent biographies attempt to force Sade into a normal/abnormal dichotomy, manipulating police reports, personal correspondence or narratorial interventions to establish (or not) the author's homosexuality. Through revealing Sade's attempts to undermine prevailing gender roles and sexual identities, Edmiston uncovers a 'queer' discourse that challenges the still common assumption that heterosexuality is exclusively natural and normative, and that nature has always prompted humans to reproduce, rather than to seek pleasure.

A moment in history when verbal satire, caricature, and comic performance exerted unprecedented influence on society, the Enlightenment sustained a complex, though now practically invisible, culture of visual humor. In Seeing satire in the eighteenth century contributors recapture the unique energy of comic images in the works of key artists and authors whose satirical intentions have been obscured by time. From a decoding of Charles-Germain de Saint-Aubin's Livre de caricatures as a titillating jibe at royal and courtly figures, a reinterpretation of the man's muff as an emblem of foreignness, foppishness and impotence, a reappraisal of F. X. Messerschmidt's sculpted heads as comic critiques of Lavater's theories of physiognomy, to the press denigration of William Wilberforce's abolitionist efforts, visual satire is shown to extend to all areas of society and culture across Europe and North America. By analysing the hidden meaning of these key works, contributors reveal how visual comedy both mediates and intensifies more serious social critique. The power of satire's appeal to the eye was as clearly understood, and as widely exploited in the Enlightenment as it is today. Includes over 80 illustrations.

Historians of eighteenth-century thought have implied a clear distinction between mystical or occult writing, often termed 'illuminist', and better-known forms of Enlightenment thinking and culture. But where are the boundaries of 'enlightened' human understanding? This is the question posed by contributors to this volume, who put forward a completely new way of configuring these seemingly antithetical currents of thought, and identify a grey area that binds the two, a 'Super-Enlightenment'. Through articles exploring the social, religious, artistic, political and scientific dimensions of the Super-Enlightenment, contributors demonstrate the co-existence of apparent opposites: the enlightened and the esoteric, empiricism and imagination, history and myth, the secretive and the public, mysticism and science. The Enlightenment can no longer be seen as a sturdy, homogeneous movement defined by certain core beliefs, but one which oscillates between opposing poles in its social practices, historiography and even its epistemology: between daring to know, and daring to know too much.

Cultural transfers between eighteenth-century France and Britain did much to shape the intellectual identity of each nation. But what were the main channels of communication? How did they function? What was their impact? In Cultural transfers: France and Britain in the long eighteenth century a team of specialists focuses on the networks and correspondences on which these exchanges were based, the concrete form they took and the material, political or ideological constraints which governed them. Particular attention is paid to the roles of: intermediaries such as diplomats, scientific institutions, or the Huguenot exiles who played a crucial part in disseminating English scientific, theological and political writings gazettes, learned periodicals, and government-sponsored journals where the French learned about British political debates and institutions translators, who could significantly alter texts in line with their own preconceptions and agendas or the expectations of their readers This multidisciplinary book moves beyond the classic concern with 'influences' of one author or culture on another. It presents a new understanding of the hidden international networks that sustained the Republic of Letters and of the synthesis that emerged through contacts and interaction between French and British culture.

Literature serves many purposes, and one of them certainly proves to be to convey messages, wisdom, and instruction, and this across languages, religions, and cultures. Beyond that, as the contributors to this volume underscore, people have always endeavored to reach out to their community members, that is, to build community, to learn from each other, and to teach. Hence, this volume explores the meaning of communication, translation, and community building based on the medium of language. While all these aspects have already been discussed in many different venues, the contributors endeavor to explore a host of heretofore less considered historical, religious, literary, political, and linguistic sources. While the dominant focus tends to rest on conflicts, hostility, and animosity in the pre-modern age, here the emphasis rests on communication with its myriad of challenges and potentials for establishing a community. As the various studies illustrate, a close reading of communicative issues opens profound perspectives regarding human relationships and hence the social context. This understanding invites intensive collaboration between medical historians, literary scholars, translation experts, and specialists on religious conflicts and discourses. We also learn how much language carries tremendous cultural and social meaning and determines in a most sensitive manner the interactions among people in a communicative and community-based fashion.

This collection of essays by leading scholars in Burney studies provides an innovative, interdisciplinary critical consideration of the relationship of one of the major authors of the long English Romantic period with the arts. The encounter was not devoid of tensions and indeed often required a degree of wrangling on Burney's part. This was a revealing and at times contentious dialogue, allowing us to reconstruct in an original and highly focused way the feminine negotiation with such key concepts of the late Enlightenment and Romanticism as virtue, reputation, creativity, originality, artistic expression, and self-construction. While there is now a flourishing body of work on Frances Burney and, more broadly, Romantic women authors, this book concentrates for the first time on the rich artistic and material context that surrounded, supported, and shaped Frances Burney's oeuvre.

Author, political activist and salonniere, Germaine de Stael has become the focal point of groundbreaking research in women's studies, in performing arts, and in language/translation theory. In this multidisciplinary volume, a team of scholars concentrates on the vast range of her political and cultural engagements, both during and after the French Revolution. In this collection of studies, which examine issues as diverse as citizenship, immigration, abolition or constitutional liberalism, Stael's stance as a champion of moderation against the perils of extremism and polarization comes clearly to the fore. Contributors shed new light on the Groupe de Coppet, the circle of which she was the heart, and on the cosmopolitan networks she created within and beyond Europe. Other articles underline and reassess Stael's formative influence on national cultures distant in space and time, redefining her Italianism in Corinne ou l'Italie, analysing the British reception of her Considerations and exploring the impact of De l'Allemagne on American intellectual life. Germaine de Stael: forging a politics of mediation highlights Stael's pioneering place in the history of global interaction. She emerges as a truly modern thinker as well as an agent of multicultural exchange.

Did 'sex education' actually exist in eighteenth-century France? Shaped by competing currents of religious dogma, atheist materialism and bourgeois morality, eighteenth-century France marked the beginning of what Michel Foucault called 'une fermentation discursive' on matters related to sex. But when we consult the educational theorists or philosophes of the time for their opinions on preparing a young person for life as a sexual being, we are met with a telling silence. Did an Enlightenment era that dared to make sex an object of discourse also dare to make it an object of pedagogy? Sex education in eighteenth-century France brings together specialists from a range of disciplines to address these issues. Using a wide variety of literary, historical, religious and pedagogical sources, contributors explore for the first time the nexus between sex and instruction. Although these two categories were publicly kept distinct, writers were effectively shaping attitudes and behaviours. Unraveling the complex system of rules and codes through which knowledge about sex was communicated, contributors uncover a new dimension in the practice of education in the eighteenth century.

THE ULTIMATE GUIDES TO EXAM SUCCESS from York Notes - the UK's favourite English Literature Study Guides. York Notes for AS & A2 have been specifically designed for AS & A2 students to help you get the very best grade you can. They are comprehensive, easy to use, packed with valuable features and written by experienced examiners and teachers to give you an expert understanding of the text, critical approaches and the all-important exam. This edition covers Dr Faustus and includes: An enhanced exam skills section which includes essay plans, expert guidance on understanding questions and sample answers. You'll know exactly what you need to do and say to get the best grades. A wealth of useful content like key quotations, revision tasks and vital study tips that'll help you revise, remember and recall all the most important information. The widest coverage and the best, most in-depth analysis of characters, themes, language, form, context and style to help you demonstrate an exhaustive understanding of all aspects of the text. York Notes for AS & A2 are also available for these popular titles: The Bloody Chamber(9781447913153) Doctor Faustus(9781447913177) Frankenstein (9781447913214) The Great Gatsby(9781447913207) The Kite Runner(9781447913160) Macbeth(9781447913146) Othello(9781447913191) WutheringHeights(9781447913184)

Studies of the republican legacy have proliferated in recent years, always to argue for a polity that cultivates the virtues, protections, and entitlements which foster the self's ability to simulate an invulnerable existence. James Kuzner's original new study of writing by Spenser, Shakespeare, Marvell and Milton is the first to present a genealogy for the modern self in which its republican origins can be understood far more radically. In doing so, the study is also the first to draw radical and republican thought into sustained conversation, and to locate a republic for which vulnerability is, unexpectedly, as much what community has to offer as it is what community guards against. At a time when the drive to safeguard citizens has gathered enough momentum to justify almost any state action, Open Subjects questions whether vulnerability is the evil we so often believe it to be. Key features: * First study to explore how early modern republican and contemporary radical thought connect with and complement each other * Traces the presence of English republicanism from the late sixteenth century to the late seventeenth * Analyses Renaissance literary texts in the context of classical, early modern, and contemporary political thought to add to how we think about selfhood in the present * Offers illuminating new readings of the place that English Renaissance figures occupy in histories of friendship, the public sphere, and selfhood more generally

Hospitality, in particular hospitality to strangers, was promoted in the eighteenth century as a universal human virtue, but writing of the period reveals many telling examples of its abuse. Through analysis of encounters across cultural and sexual divides, Judith Still revisits the current debate about the social, moral and political values of the Enlightenment. Focussing on (in)hospitality in relation to two kinds of exotic Other, Judith Still examines representations of indigenous peoples of the New World, both as hosts and as cannibals, and of the Moslem 'Oriental' in Persia and Turkey, associated with both the caravanserai (where travellers rest) and the harem. She also explores very different examples of Europeans as hosts and the practice of 'adoption', particularly that of young girls. The position of women in hospitality, hitherto neglected in favour of questions of cultural difference, is central to these analyses, and Still considers the work of women writers alongside more canonical male-authored texts. In this thought-provoking study, Judith Still uncovers how the Enlightenment rhetoric of openness and hospitality is compromised by self-interest; the questions it raises about attitudes to difference and freedom are equally relevant today.

Recent archival research has focussed on the material conditions of marriage in eighteenth-century France, providing new insight into the social and judicial contexts of marital violence. Mary Trouille builds on these findings to write the first book on spousal abuse during this period. Through close examination of a wide range of texts, Trouille shows how lawyers and novelists adopted each other's rhetorical strategies to present competing versions of the truth. Male voices - those of husbands, lawyers, editors, and moralists - are analysed in accounts of separation cases presented in Des Essarts's influential Causes celebres, in moral and legal treatises, and in legal briefs by well-known lawyers of the period. Female voices, both real and imagined, are explored through court testimony and novels based on actual events by Sade, Genlis, and Retif de la Bretonne. By bringing the traditionally private matter of spousal abuse into the public arena, these texts had a significant impact on public opinion and served as an impetus for legal reform in the early years of the French Revolution. Trouille's interdisciplinary study makes a significant contribution to our understanding of attitudes towards women in eighteenth-century society, and provides a historical context for debates about domestic violence that are very much alive today.

Eighteenth-century Epicureanism is often viewed as radical, anti-religious and politically dangerous. But to what extent does this simplify the ancient philosophy and underestimate its significance in Enlightenment writing? Through a pan-European analysis of Enlightenment centres from Scotland to Russia via the Netherlands, France and Germany, contributors argue that elements of classical Epicureanism were appropriated by radical and conservative writers alike. They move beyond literature and political theory to examine the application of Epicurean ideas in domains as diverse as physics, natural law, and the philosophy of language, drawing on the work of both major figures (Diderot, Helvetius, Smith and Hume) and of lesser-known but equally influential thinkers (Johann Jacob Schmauss and Dmitrii Anichkov). This unique collaboration, bringing together historians, philosophers, political scientists and literary scholars, provides rich and varied insights into the different strategic uses of Epicureanism in the eighteenth century.

On ne peut penser les Lumieres sans l'auteur du Contrat social et l'Emile, mais on ne saurait cependant nier que Rousseau denonce les 'philosophes modernes' dans les termes les plus forts. Comment donc penser les rapports entre Rousseau et les philosophes? Dans ce volume les specialistes de Rousseau vont au-dela des oppositions figees. Ils montrent comment le 'citoyen de Geneve', a partir de sources philosophiques partagees avec ses contemporains, delimite le champ de la raison et construit une pensee politique rigoureuse, s'imposant ainsi a ceux qui souvent rejettent ses idees religieuses ou sa denonciation des sciences et des arts. Confrontant la richesse irreductible de ses ecrits, les auteurs proposent le portrait intellectuel d'un homme qui construit sa pensee a la fois avec et contre les philosophes, les obligeant a justifier ou a modifier leurs propres convictions face au defi que represente son oeuvre. Figure emblematique de son siecle, Rousseau suscite l'indignation mais oblige aussi a des reexamens difficiles. C'est par l'etude de cette position a la fois centrale et marginale que l'on peut saisir la force de sa pensee et discerner ce qu'elle signifie pour nous.

What constituted the 'private' in the eighteenth-century? In Representing private lives of the Enlightenment authors look beyond a simple equation of the private and the domestic to explore the significance of the individual and its constructions of identity and environment. Taking case studies from Russia, France, Italy and England, specialists from a range of disciplines analyse descriptions of the private situated largely outside the familial context: the nobleman at the theatre or in his study, the woman in her boudoir, portraitists and their subject, the solitary wanderer in the public garden, the penitent at confession. This critical approach provides a comparative framework that simultaneously confirms the Enlightenment as a pan-European movement, both intellectually and socially, whilst uncovering striking counterpoints. What emerges is a unique sense of how individuals from different classes and cultures sought to map their social and domestic sphere, and an understanding of the permeable boundaries separating private and public.

The Encyclopaedia britannica is a familiar cultural icon, but what do we know about the early editions that helped shape it into the longest continuously published encyclopedia still in existence? This first examination of the three eighteenth-century editions traces the Britannica's extraordinary development into a best seller and an exceptional book of knowledge, especially in biography and in the natural sciences. The combined expertise of the contributors to this volume allows an extensive exploration of each edition, covering its publication history and evolving editorial practices, its commentary on subjects that came in and out of fashion and its contemporary reception. The contributors also examine the cultural and intellectual milieu in which the Britannica flourished, discussing its role in the Scottish Enlightenment and comparing its pressrun, contents, reputation, and influence with those of the much more reform-minded Encyclopedie.

'Women seem to be destined solely for our pleasure. When they no longer have that attraction, they have lost everything' (letter from Diderot to Sophie Volland, 1762). How typical was this view of the 'older woman' in the eighteenth century? What was it like for women of intelligence and sensibility to grow old in such a culture? By studying the correspondences of four prominent women (Francoise de Graffigny, Marie Du Deffand, Marie Riccoboni and Isabelle de Charriere) during their middle and late years, Stewart explores the relation of female aging to respectability, sexuality and power. The author's focus lies in the physical, emotional and professional well-being of middle-aged and elderly women during a time when all the available dignity of age seemed to belong to men. The 'repulsiveness' of growing old was patently a female issue. One of the most emblematic aspects of these correspondences is the often unrequited love of older women for younger men during a period when the common wisdom denied women the right to any feelings except piety. Stewart juxtaposes their letters with representations of aging women in the period's fictional and medical literature. She takes up several canonical, mostly male-authored, texts that purvey this common wisdom, and re-reads them with originality and grace. Through The Enlightenment of age - at once learned, highly personal and entertaining - Stewart speaks to us about the secret lives of older women, and about the ethos of an era.

The handbook offers a comprehensive introduction to the British novel in the long eighteenth century, when this genre emerged to develop into the period's most versatile and popular literary form. Part I features six systematic chapters that discuss literary, intellectual, socio-economic, and political contexts, providing innovative approaches to issues such as sense and sentiment, gender considerations, formal characteristics, economic history, enlightened and radical concepts of citizenship and human rights, ecological ramifications, and Britain's growing global involvement. Part II presents twenty-five analytical chapters that attend to individual novels, some canonical and others recently recovered. These analyses engage the debates outlined in the systematic chapters, undertaking in-depth readings that both contextualize the works and draw on relevant criticism, literary theory, and cultural perspectives. The handbook's breadth and depth, clear presentation, and lucid language make it attractive and accessible to scholar and student alike.

The modern encyclopedia was born in the eighteenth century. Although numerous studies have shed light on its evolution, important participants have been neglected. Dennis de Coetlogon's Universal history of the arts and sciences may be little known to us today, but its contribution to the development of the encyclopedia is as compelling as it is paradoxical. Loveland examines the Universal history in its cultural context to provide the most detailed picture to date of the world of British encyclopedias in the first half of the eighteenth century. His lively analysis reveals how Coetlogon: flouted the emerging norms of encyclopedia-writing, combining impartial discourse with harangues, advertisements and personal revelations broadened the scope of the traditional dictionary of arts and sciences towards history, geography and religion included far fewer and longer articles than was customary in alphabetical works championed Christian and politically conservative values, providing a fascinating counter-model to the later French Encyclopedie In triggering the adoption of serial publication by the owners of Chambers's Cyclopedia, and establishing a model for alphabetized treatises taken up by the Encyclopedia Britannica, the Universal history was indeed an inspiration for the modern encyclopedia.

For a brief period in the late Elizabethan Era an innovative company of players dominated the London stage. A fellowship of dedicated thespians, Lord Strange's Men established their reputation by concentrating on "modern matter" performed in a spectacular style, exploring new modes of impersonation, and deliberately courting controversy. Supported by their equally controversial patron, theater connoisseur and potential claimant to the English throne Ferdinando Stanley, the company included Edward Alleyn, considered the greatest actor of the age, as well as George Bryan, Thomas Pope, Augustine Phillips, William Kemp, and John Hemings, who later joined William Shakespeare and Richard Burbage in the Lord Chamberlain's Men. Though their theatrical reign was relatively short lived, Lord Strange's Men helped to define the dramaturgy of the period, performing the plays of Shakespeare, Christopher Marlowe, Thomas Kyd, and others with their own distinctive flourish.
Lawrence Manley and Sally-Beth MacLean offer the first complete account of the troupe and its enormous influence on Elizabethan theater. Seamlessly blending theater history and literary criticism, the authors paint a lively portrait of a unique community of performing artists, their intellectual ambitions and theatrical innovations, their business practices, and their fearless engagements with the politics and religion of their time.

Shakespeare was born into a new age of will, in which individual intent had the potential to overcome dynastic expectation. The 1540 Statute of Wills had liberated testamentary disposition of land and thus marked a turning point from hierarchical feudal tradition to horizontal free trade. Focusing on Shakespeare's late Elizabethan plays, Gary Watt demonstrates Shakespeare's appreciation of testamentary tensions and his ability to exploit the inherent drama of performing will. Drawing on years of experience delivering rhetoric workshops for the Royal Shakespeare Company and as a prize-winning teacher of law, Gary Watt shows that Shakespeare is playful with legal technicality rather than obedient to it. The author demonstrates how Shakespeare transformed lawyers' manual book rhetoric into powerful drama through a stirring combination of word, metre, movement and physical stage material, producing a mode of performance that was truly testamentary in its power to engage the witnessing public. Published on the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare's last will and testament, this is a major contribution to the growing interdisciplinary field of law and humanities.

Niccolo Machiavelli's The Prince remains an influential book more than five centuries after he wrote his timeless classic. However, the political philosophy expressed by Machiavelli in his tome is often misunderstood. Although he thought humans to be rational, self-interested creatures, and even though he proposed an approach to politics in which the ends justify the means, Machiavelli was not, as some have argued, simply "a teacher of evil." The Prince's many ancient and medieval examples, while relevant to sixteenth century readers, are lost on most of today's students of Machiavelli. Examples from modern films and television programs, which are more familiar and understandable to contemporary readers, provide a better way to accurately teach Machiavelli's lessons. Indeed, modern media, such as Breaking Bad, The Godfather, The Walking Dead, Charlie Wilson's War, House of Cards, Argo, and The Departed, are replete with illustrations that teach Machiavelli's critical principles, including the need to caress or annihilate, learning "how not to be good," why it is better to be feared than loved, and how to act as both the lion and the fox. Modern media are used in this book to exemplify the tactics Machiavelli advocated and to comprehensively demonstrate that Machiavelli intended for government actors and those exercising power in other contexts to fight for a greater good and strive to achieve glory.