Imagining Monsters - Miscreations of the Self in Eighteenth-Century England

Autor: Dennis Todd

Limbă:

Legare: Carte broșată

Editura: The University of Chicago Press

Disponibilitate: În depozitul extern

Expediem în 9-15 zile

247.28 lei

In 1726, an illiterate woman from Surrey named Mary Toft announced that she had given birth to 17 ra...

Informații despre carte

Autor

Dennis Todd

Limbă

engleză

Legare

Carte - Carte broșată

Publicat

1995

Pagini

358

EAN

9780226805566

ISBN

0226805565

Enbook ID

04550016

Editura

The University of Chicago Press

Greutate

554

Dimensiuni

231 x 227 x 28

Descriere completă

In 1726, an illiterate woman from Surrey named Mary Toft announced that she had given birth to 17 rabbits. Deceiving respected physicians and citizens alike, she created a hoax that held England spellbound for months. This study recreates the story of this incident and shows how it illuminates 18th-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 foetus, creating a monster within her. Drawing on 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 this study provides 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.

S-ar putea să te intereseze

Clienții care au cumpărat această carte au mai cumpărat și

Cele mai căutate

Categories

Authors

Publishers

Produse

Produse

Cele mai căutate

Categories

Authors

Publishers

Produse

Produse

Imagining Monsters - Miscreations of the Self in Eighteenth-Century England

Informații despre carte

Descriere completă

S-ar putea să te intereseze

Clienții care au cumpărat această carte au mai cumpărat și