- Title Information
- Title
- Disordered Bodies and Bodies-Politic in British Enlightenment Culture
- Name:
Personal
- Name Part
- Azfar, Farid M.
- Role
- Role Term:
Text
- creator
- Origin Information
- Copyright Date
(encoding="w3cdtf", keyDate="yes")
- 2008
- Physical Description
- Extent
- ix, 321 p.
- digitalOrigin
- born digital
- Note
- Thesis (Ph.D.) -- Brown University (2009)
- Name:
Personal
- Name Part
- Harris, Tim
- Role
- Role Term:
Text
- director
- Name:
Personal
- Name Part
- Harris, Tim
- Role
- Role Term:
Text
- reader
- Name:
Personal
- Name Part
- Cohen, Deborah
- Role
- Role Term:
Text
- reader
- Name:
Personal
- Name Part
- Steinberg, Michael
- Role
- Role Term:
Text
- reader
- Name:
Corporate
- Name Part
- Brown University. History
- Role
- Role Term:
Text
- sponsor
- Genre (aat)
- theses
- Abstract
- This dissertation uncovers an Enlightenment that occurred in Britain between 1720 and 1740, from the collapse of the South Sea Bubble to the War of Jenkin's Ear. It challenges the
idea of a generic Enlightenment as ideological bedrock to a generic modernity. The event I describe was an extended, society-wide response to a particular manifestation of modernity: to the
problems and tensions of commercial growth, metropolitan life, and political emancipation. It was non-specific to elite philosophical texts. The argument is anchored around fears of disordered
bodies and bodies-politic as they shaped public debates over topics as diverse as medicine, bridge-building, grain distribution, and foreign policy. The five chapters progressively trace the
transmutation of these fears, as manufactured and manipulated by the participants in these debates, into recognizably enlightened sensibilities. Ideals of equity, balance, and restraint deepened
in response to visions of the fragile interdependence between peoples, states, cities, and rivers. Three of the Enlightenment's most critical ideals ? activity, happiness, and a skeptical
pursuit of certainty ? evolved and converged as the pressures of metropolitan life exacerbated fears of the spleen. Similar anxieties catalyzed the articulation of secular sensibilities of
restraint, calibrated by notions of alienation, individualism, self-control, concealment, sociability, and venting. The last two chapters focus upon the 1730s ? a decade distinguished by an
exceptionally vibrant political public sphere. An enlightened commercialism was culturally entrenched as Opposition propagandists distortedly exploited fears of weakness and enervation ? fears
that were rooted in the very commercialism they were so aggressively propagandizing. An interest and investment in thinking ? perhaps the most prized of all Enlightenment ideals ? deepened as
the skullduggery and sloganeering that surrounded the excise crisis of 1733 and anti-Spanish agitation of 1738-9 generated anxieties about the supposedly weak minds of the political public.
Cultures of urban consumption amplified these anxieties and, as a consequence, deepened the investment. Collectively, these chapters recreate an Enlightenment composed of a cacophony of
alternative voices, which, disturbed by the excesses of modernity, or the exploitation of political freedoms, rallied different forms of restoration, transformation, and
regeneration.
- Subject (Local)
- Topic
- The Enlightenment
- Subject (Local)
- Topic
- Britain
- Subject (Local)
- Topic
- the body
- Subject (Local)
- Topic
- the city
- Subject (Local)
- Topic
- public sphere
- Subject (FAST)
(authorityURI="http://id.worldcat.org/fast", valueURI="http://id.worldcat.org/fast/869279")
- Topic
- Commerce
- Subject (FAST)
(authorityURI="http://id.worldcat.org/fast", valueURI="http://id.worldcat.org/fast/1011027")
- Topic
- Masculinity
- Subject (FAST)
(authorityURI="http://id.worldcat.org/fast", valueURI="http://id.worldcat.org/fast/810950")
- Topic
- Anxiety
- Subject (FAST)
(authorityURI="http://id.worldcat.org/fast", valueURI="http://id.worldcat.org/fast/1110732")
- Topic
- Secularism
- Subject (FAST)
(authorityURI="http://id.worldcat.org/fast", valueURI="http://id.worldcat.org/fast/1204623")
- Geographic
- Great Britain
- Record Information
- Record Content Source (marcorg)
- RPB
- Record Creation Date
(encoding="iso8601")
- 20091218
- Language
- Language Term:
Code (ISO639-2B)
- eng
- Language Term:
Text
- English
- Identifier:
DOI
- 10.7301/Z07P8WS7
- Access Condition:
rights statement
(href="http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/")
- In Copyright
- Access Condition:
restriction on access
- Collection is open for research.
- Type of Resource (primo)
- dissertations