Vital Matters: Eighteenth-Century Views of Conception, Life, and Death

344 Pages·2012·1.936 MB·English

by  Helen Deutsch, Mary Terrall

VITAL MATTERS:
EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY VIEWS OF
CONCEPTION, LIFE, AND DEATH
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VITAL MATTERS
EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY VIEWS OF
CONCEPTION, LIFE, AND DEATH
Edited by Helen Deutsch and Mary Terrall
Published by the University of Toronto Press in association with the
UCLA Center for Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century Studies and
the William Andrews Clark Memorial Library
© The Regents of the University of California 2012
www.utppublishing.com
Printed in Canada
ISBN 978-1-4426-4258-4
Printed on acid-free, 100% post-consumer recycled paper with
vegetable-based inks.
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Vital matters : eighteenth-century views of conception,
life, and death/edited by Helen Deutsch and Mary Terrall.
Includes bibliographical references and index
ISBN 978-1-4426-4258-4
1. Life(Biology) – Philosophy – History – 18th century.
2. Matter – Philosophy – History – 18th century. I. Deutsch,
Helen, 1961– II. Terrall, Mary
QH501.V58 2012 570.109’033 C2012-901624-1
This book has been published with the help of a grant from the UCLA Center
for Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century Studies.
University of Toronto Press acknowledges the fi nancial assistance
to its publishing program of the Canada Council for the Arts and
the Ontario Arts Council.
University of Toronto Press acknowledges the fi nancial support
of the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund forits
publishing activities.
Contents
List of Figures vii
Acknowledgments ix
Introduction 3
HELEN DEUTSCH AND MARY TERRALL
1 Living with Lucretius 13
JONATHAN KRAMNICK
2 Dismantl’d Souls: The Verse Epistle, Embodied Subjectivity,
and Poetic Animation 39
HELEN DEUTSCH
3 Girodet and the Eternal Sleep 57
KEVIN CHUA
4 Tristram Shandy and the Art of Conception 93
RAYMOND STEPHANSON
5 Material Impressions: Conception, Sensibility, and Inheritance 109
MARY TERRALL
6 Misconceiving the Heir: Mind and Matter in the Warming Pan
Propaganda 130
CORRINNE HAROL
vi Contents
7 From the Man-Machine to the Automaton-Man: The Enlightenment
Origins of the Mechanistic Imagery of Humanity 148
MINSOO KANG
8 The ‘Fair Savage’: Empiricism and Essence in Sarah Fielding’s
The History of Ophelia 174
HELEN THOMPSON
9 Food and Feeling: ‘Digestive Force’ and the Nature of Morbidity
in Vitalist Medicine 203
ELIZABETH A. WILLIAMS
10 The Divine Touch, or Touching Divines: John Hunter, David Hume,
and the Bishop of Durham’s Rectum 222
SIMON CHAPLIN
11 The Value of a Dead Body 246
ANITA GUERRINI
12 Noticing Death: Funeral Invitations and Obituaries in Early
Modern Britain 265
LORNA CLYMER
Contributors 307
Index 311
Figures
Figure 3.1 Anne-Louis Girodet de Roussy-Trioson, The Sleep of Endymion,
1793. Oil on canvas, Louvre, Paris, France. Photo: Erich Lessing / Art
Resource, NY 58
Figure 3.2 From Christoph-Martin Wieland, Endymion, 1771. The William
Andrews Clark Memorial Library, University of California, Los Angeles,
PQ1947.C76 62
Figure 3.3 English Funerary Ceremony, mid-eighteenth century. Roger-
Viollet / The Image Works, ERVL4811701 65
Figure 3.4 Anne-Louis Girodet de Roussy-Trioson, Doctor Trioson on His
Deathbed. Drawing, Musée Girodet, Montargis, France. Photo: Jacques
Faujour / Musée Girodet 67
Figure 3.5 François-Xavier Fabre, Death of Abel, 1790. Musée Fabre,
Montpellier, France 69
Figure 3.6 Sarcophagus, third century. Paris, Musée du Louvre, inv. MR
751, Ma 362 72
Figure 3.7 From Abbé Saint-Non, Voyage Pittoresque, 1781–6. Library of
the Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles 73
Figure 3.8 ‘Frieze’ sarcophagus, Rome, last quarter of third century
AD. Marble, Musei Vaticani / photo Monumenti Musei e Gallerie
Pontifi cie, Rome 74
Figure 3.9 Anne-Louis Girodet de Roussy-Trioson, Dead Christ Comforted
by the Virgin, 1789. Oil on canvas, Montesquieu-Volvestre (Haute-
Garonne), Église Saint-Victor, inv. PM31000418 (MH) 78
Figure 3.10 Anne-Louis Girodet de Roussy-Trioson, Portrait of the Young
Romainville Trioson, 1800. Louvre, Paris, France. Photo: Erich Lessing /
Art Resource, NY 81
Figure 4.1 Laurence Sterne, graphic spoofi ng of Tristram’s plot lines,
Tristram Shandy, vol. 6, chap 40 101
viii Figures
Figure 10.1 A reconstruction of John Hunter’s home and anatomy
school in Leicester Square, ca. 1792. By permission of The Royal
College of Surgeons of England / John Ronayne 231
Figure 12.1 Invitation to the funeral of Mr Thomas Foley, used in
October 1677 [?]. By permission of The Bodleian Libraries, University
of Oxford ( John Johnson Collection, Funerary box 1) 273
Figure 12.2 Memento mori ‘godly tablet,’ 1640s. By permission of the
Folger Shakespeare Library (STC 17816.5) 275
Figure 12.3 Invitation to the funeral of Mr Thomas Moody, used in 1716.
By permission of The Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford (John
Johnson Collection, Funerary box 1) 277
Figure 12.4 Invitation to the funeral of Mrs Elizabeth Tolson, used in
the 1770s [?]. By permission of the William Andrews Clark Memorial
Library, University of California, Los Angeles, MS.1984.003 281
Figure 12.5 Invitation to the funeral of Mr Richard M. Adams, late
eighteenth century [?]. By permission of The Bodleian Libraries,
University of Oxford (John Johnson Collection, Funerary box 1) 283
Figure 12.6 Unused funeral invitation, early nineteenth century [?]. By
permission of The Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford (John
Johnson Collection, Funerary box 1) 286
Acknowledgments
Our heartfelt thanks go to Peter Reill, Barbara Fuchs, and the wonderful
staff of the Center for Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century Studies and
the William Andrews Clark Memorial Library, who facilitated the year’s
worth of conferences on which this volume is based and supported the
book’s publication. We are grateful to all the conference participants,
especially the postdoctoral fellows who enlivened Vital Matters both in
person and in print: Kevin Chua, Lucia Dacome, Sophie Gee, and Julie
Park. Vic Fusilero, Kimberly Garmoe, and Julia Callander contributed
essential research assistance, and Ellen Wilson went above and beyond
in her work on the index. We thank the two anonymous readers at the
University of Toronto Press, whose work greatly improved the manuscript.
Special thanks, for everything, to Michael and Theo Meranze.