Description
Book SynopsisDrawing on the generous semantic range the term enjoyed in early modern usage, the book argues that person as early moderns understood it was an experimental phenomenon--at once a given of experience and the self-conscious arena of that experience.
Trade Review"Braider’s command of literature, history of ideas, and his ability to make philosophers, scientists, and writers think together is definitely impressive and insightful." -- Christophe Schuwey, Yale University *
University of Toronto Quarterly: Letters in Canada 2018 *
"Experimental Selves joins a growing number of studies of early modern personhood... Braider explores the idea that, as he puts it, 'person itself is experiment' at length in relation to early modern theatre." -- Charles T. Wolfe, Cá’Foscari University *
Publishing Research Quarterly *
Table of ContentsIntroduction. Changing the Subject: Early Modern Persons and the Culture of Experiment 1. The Shape of Knowledge: The Culture of Experiment and the Byways of Expression 2. The Art of the Inside Out: Vision and Expression in Hoogstraten’s London Peepshow 3. Persons and Portraits: The Vicissitudes of Burckhardt’s Individual 4. Justice in the Marketplace: The Invisible Hand in Ben Jonson’s Bartholomew Fayre 5. Actor, Act, and Action: The Poetics of Agency in Corneille, Racine, and Molière 6. The Experiment of Beauty: Vraisemblance Extraordinaire in Lafayette’s Princesse de Clèves 7. Groping in the Dark: Aesthetics and Ontology in Diderot and Kant Conclusion. Person, Experiment, and the World They Made
