Imagining Monsters: Miscreations of the Self in Eighteenth-Century EnglandUniversity of Chicago Press, 15 nov 1995 - 339 pagina's In 1726, an illiterate woman from Surrey named Mary Toft announced that she had given birth to seventeen rabbits. Deceiving respected physicians and citizens alike, she created a hoax that held England spellbound for months. In Imagining Monsters, Dennis Todd tells the story of this bizarre incident and shows how it illuminates eighteenth-century beliefs about the power of imagination and the problems of personal identity. Mary Toft's outrageous claim was accepted because of a common belief that the imagination of a pregnant woman could deform her fetus, creating a monster within her. Drawing on largely unexamined material from medicine, embryology, philosophy, and popular "monster" exhibitions, Todd shows that such ideas about monstrous births expressed a fear central to scientific, literary, and philosophical thinking: that the imagination could transgress the barrier between mind and body. In his analysis of the Toft case, Todd exposes deep anxieties about the threat this transgressive imagination posed to the idea of the self as stable, coherent, and autonomous. Major works of Pope and Swift reveal that they, too, were concerned with these issues, and Imagining Monsters provides detailed discussions of Gulliver's Travels and The Dunciad illustrating how these writers used images of monstrosity to explore the problematic nature of human identity. It also includes a provocative analysis of Pope's later work that takes into account his physical deformity and his need to defend himself in a society that linked a deformed body with a deformed character. |
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Overige edities - Alles bekijken
Imagining Monsters: Miscreations of the Self in Eighteenth-Century England Dennis Todd Gedeeltelijke weergave - 1995 |
Imagining Monsters: Miscreations of the Self in Eighteenth-Century England Dennis Todd Geen voorbeeld beschikbaar - 1995 |
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Advertisement Ahlers Alexander Pope Anatomist André anxiety appear Arbuthnot argued attack bagnio Bartholomew Fair become believe Blondel Brain Brobdingnag Caryll cause character child Cibber claims confessed confusion corporeal Corr creatures Cunicularii December deformed delivered doctors Douglas Dulness Dunces Dunciad eighteenth century Enthusiast Essay fact faculties fancy fetus fools Garland Publishing giddy Godalming Guildford Gulliver Gulliver's Travels heart hoax Hogarth Houyhnhnms Howard Hudibras human identity images immaterial substance John John Byrom Jonathan Swift king letter London Lord Hervey Malebranche Manningham Mary Toft affair Mary Toft incident matter Maubray mechanism Memoirs Molyneux monsters monstrous birth mother mother's imagination Motion Nature passions physical poem poetry Pope Pope's rabbits Samuel Molyneux satire satirist Scriblerians sense shape Short Narrative sight Soul species stereotype surgeon Swift things thought tion Toft's truth Turner turns University Press uterus virtue vols woman wonder writing wrote Yahoos
Verwijzingen naar dit boek
Wonder and Science: Imagining Worlds in Early Modern Europe Mary B. Campbell Gedeeltelijke weergave - 1999 |
Marvelous Protestantism: Monstrous Births in Post-Reformation England Julie Crawford Geen voorbeeld beschikbaar - 2005 |