Description
Book SynopsisLocating materialism within the larger history of ideas, Vital Matters examines how and why eighteenth-century scientists, philosophers, writers, and artists questioned nature and its animating principles.
Trade Review'This is a collection that is breathtaking in its range... Deutsch and Terrall have compiled an admirably broad range of contributions on a topic of crucial importance for eighteenth-century studies, and this is a book that deserves to be read by students of its themes and period. In the final analysis, Vital Matters matters.' -- Andrew Wells Modern Language Review vol 109:01:2014 'This study would fascinate anyone with even slightest interest in either the eighteenth century or the perennial issues of life and death that it explores...A superb collection... Vital Matters is a wonderful contribution to the literature of eighteenth century thought.' -- James Stacey Taylor The Historian vol 76:03:2014
Table of ContentsIntroduction Helen Deutsch and Mary Terrall 1 Living with Lucretius Jonathan Kramnick 2 Dismantl'd Souls: The Verse Epistle, Embodied Subjectivity, and Poetic Animation Helen Deutsch 3 Girodet and the Eternal Sleep Kevin Chua 4 Tristram Shandy and the Art of Conception Raymond Stephanson 5 Material Impressions: Conception, Sensibility and Inheritance Mary Terrall 6 Misconceiving the Heir: Mind and Matter in the Warming-Pan Propaganda Corrinne Harol 7 From the Man-Machine to the Automation-Man: The Enlightenment Origins of the Mechanistic Imagery of Humanity Minsoo Kang 8 The 'fair Savage': Empiricism and Essence in Sarah Fielding's The History of Ophelia Helen Thompson 9 Food and Feeling: 'Digestive Force' and the Nature of Morbidity in Vitalist Medicine Elizabeth A. Williams 10 The divine touch, or touching divines: John Hunter, David Hume and the Bishop of Durham's rectum Simon Chaplin 11 The Value of a Dead Body Anita Guerrini 12 Noticing Death: Funeral Invitations and Obituaries in Early Modern Britain Lorna Clymer Contributors Index
