Mind, Body, Motion, Matter
. Ed(S): McMurran, Mary Helen; Conway, Alison
Mind, Body, Motion, Matter investigates the relationship between the eighteenth century’s two predominant approaches to the natural world – mechanistic materialism and vitalism – in the works of leading British and French writers such as Daniel Defoe, William Hogarth, Laurence Sterne, the third Earl of Shaftesbury and Denis Diderot. Focusing on embodied experience and the materialization of thought in poetry, novels, art, and religion, the literary scholars in this collection offer new and intriguing readings of these canonical authors. Informed by contemporary currents such as new materialism, cognitive studies, media theory, and post-secularism, their essays demonstrate the volatility of the core ideas opened up by materialism and the possibilities of an aesthetic vitalism of form.
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About . Ed(S): McMurran, Mary Helen; Conway, Alison
Reviews for Mind, Body, Motion, Matter
Matthew Rowney
Eighteenth Century Fiction
‘Mary Helen McMurran and Alison Conway have edited a great collection of essays on the topic of eighteenth-century science. Mind, Body, Motion, Matter offers an amazing range of topics and concerns.’
George E. Haggerty
Studies in English Literature
"The stimulating articles in this volume present new approaches to some complicated concepts concerning materialism in the eighteenth century, concepts that have been considered and debated before, but not in this impressive, challenging, and, at times, provocative manner…The articles, which are of a uniformly high quality, will appeal to a broad spectrum of interests, aesthetic, literary, philosophical, French, and English."
Hugh Reid, Carleton University
University of Toronto Quarterly