Bellies, bowels and entrails in the eighteenth century / edited by Rebecca Anne Barr, Sylvie Kleiman-Lafon and Sophie Vasset.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Barr, Rebecca Anne, editor.

Kleiman-Lafon, Sylvie, editor.

Vasset, Sophie, editor.

Series:

Seventeenth- and eighteenth-century studies.

Seventeenth- and eighteenth-century studies

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Human body (Philosophy).

Enlightenment.

Self.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (xvii, 349 pages) : digital, PDF file(s).

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Manchester : Manchester University Press, 2018.

Language Note:

In English.

Summary:

This book seeks to challenge the notion of the supremacy of the brain as the key organ of the Enlightenment. It is done by focusing on the workings of the bowels and viscera that so obsessed writers and thinkers during the long eighteenth-century. These inner organs and the digestive process acted as counterpoints to politeness and other modes of refined sociability, drawing attention to the deeper workings of the self. The book complicates the idea that discourses and representations of digestion and bowels are confined to so-called consumption culture of the long eighteenth century, in which dysfunctional bowels are categorised as a symptom of excess. It offers an interdisciplinary and cross-cultural perspective on entrails and digestion by addressing urban history, visual studies, literature, medical history, religious history, and material culture in England, France, and Germany. The book explores the metaphorical and symbolic connections between the entrails of the body and the bowels of the city or the labyrinthine tunnels of the mine. It then illustrates the materiality of digestion by focusing on its by-products and their satirical or epistemological manifestations. The book expounds further on the burlesque motif of the innards as it is used to subvert areas of more serious knowledge, from medical treatises to epic literature or visual representation. Finally, it focuses on drawings, engravings and caricatures which used the bowels, viscera and entrails to articulate political protest, Revolutionary tensions and subversion through scatological aesthetics, or to expose those invisible organs.

Contents:

Introduction: entrails and digestion in the eighteenth century / Rebecca Anne Barr, Sylvie Kleiman-Lafon, Sophie Vasset

The belly and the viscera of the capital city / Gilles Thomas

The intestinal labours of Paris / Sabine Barles, André́ Guillerme

Digesting in the long eighteenth century / Ian Mille

The soul in the entrails: the experience of the sick in the eighteenth century / Micheline Louis-Courvoisier

Sawney's seat: the social imaginary of the London bog-house c.1660-c.1800 / Mark Jenner

Eighteenth-century paper: the readers' digest / Amélie Junqua

'Words have no smell': faecal references in eighteenth century French théâtre de société / Jennifer Ruimi

The legibility of the bowels: Lichtenberg's excretory vision of Hogarth's A Harlot's Progress / Anthony Mahler

Parodies of pompous knowledge: treatises on farting / Guilhem Armand

Potbelly, paunch and innards: variations on the abdomen in Marivaux's L'Homère travesti and Le Télémaque travesti / Clémence Aznavour

Desire, disgust and indigestibility in John Cleland's Memoirs of a Coxcomb / Rebecca Anne Barr

Rotund bellies and double chins: Hogarth's bodies / Frédéric Ogée

Iconography of the belly: eighteenth-century satirical prints / Barbara Stentz

Visceral visions: art, pedagogy and politics in Revolutionary France / Dorothy Johnson

The saints of the entrails and the bowels of the earth / Jacques Gélis.

Notes:

Title from publisher's bibliographic system (viewed on 02 Jan 2026).

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9781526127075

1526127075

9781526138682

1526138689

9781526127068

1526127067

OCLC:

1046634180