Voluptuous philosophy : literary materialism in the French Enlightenment / Natania Meeker.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Meeker, Natania.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Representation (Philosophy).

Materialism.

Literature--History and criticism.

Literature.

Literature--Philosophy.

Enlightenment--France.

Enlightenment.

France.

Physical Description:

ix, 310 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

New York : Fordham University Press, 2006.

Summary:

In 18th-century France, matter itself?in forms ranging from atoms to anatomies?became a privileged object of study. Voluptuous Philosophy redefines what is at stake in the emergence of an enlightened secular materialism by showing how questions of figure?How should a body be represented? What should the effects of this representation be on readers??are tellingly and consistently located at the very heart of 18th-century debates about the nature of material substance.

Contents:

1 Voluptuous Figures: Lucretian Materialism in Eighteenth-Century France 17

2 Reading for Pleasure in the French Enlightenment: The Self-Possessed Reader and the Decline of Voluptas 59

3 "Flowers Strewn on the Way to Volupte": La Mettrie and the Tropic Body of the Epicurean Philosopher 88

4 "I Resist It No Longer": Therese philosophe and the Compulsions of Enlightened Literary Materialism 126

5 Dynamism and Disinterest: The Materialist Reader and Diderot's Dream 155

6 "A Fallacious and Always Perilous Metaphysic": The Sadean Critique of Sentiment and the Neo-Lucretian Novel 189.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 293-303) and index.

ISBN:

9780823226962

OCLC:

74964708

Publisher Number:

9780823226962