TY - BOOK AU - Davidson,Jenny TI - Breeding: A Partial History of the Eighteenth Century SN - 9780231138789 U1 - 809/.93353 PY - 2008///] CY - New York, NY : PB - Columbia University Press, KW - Biology in literature KW - Breeding in literature KW - Breeding KW - Great Britain KW - Philosophy KW - History KW - 18th century KW - Education and heredity KW - English literature KW - History and criticism KW - Eugenics in literature KW - Eugenics KW - Heredity in literature KW - Literature and science KW - Nature and nurture KW - HISTORY / Modern / 18th Century KW - bisacsh N1 - Frontmatter --; Contents --; Acknowledgments --; Introduction. Breeding Before Biology --; Chapter 1. The Rules of Resemblance --; Chapter 2. Bent --; Chapter 3. Cultures of Improvement --; Chapter 4. A Natural History of Inequality --; Chapter 5. Blots on the Landscape --; Chapter 6. Shibboleths --; Notes --; Bibliography of Works Cited --; Index; restricted access; Issued also in print N2 - The Enlightenment commitment to reason naturally gave rise to a belief in the perfectibility of man. Influenced by John Locke and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, many eighteenth-century writers argued that the proper education and upbringing¿breeding¿could make any man a member of the cultural elite. Yet even in this egalitarian environment, the concept of breeding remained tied to theories of blood lineage, caste distinction, and biological difference. Turning to the works of Locke, Rousseau, Swift, Defoe, and other giants of the British Enlightenment, Jenny Davidson revives the debates that raged over the husbandry of human nature and highlights their critical impact on the development of eugenics, the emergence of fears about biological determinism, and the history of the language itself. Combining rich historical research with a keen sense of story, she links explanations for the physical resemblance between parents and children to larger arguments about culture and society and shows how the threads of this compelling conversation reveal the character of a century. A remarkable intellectual history, Breeding not only recasts the fundamental concerns of the Enlightenment but also uncovers the seeds of thought that bloomed into contemporary notions of human perfectibility UR - https://doi.org/10.7312/davi13878 UR - https://www.degruyter.com/isbn/9780231511117 UR - https://www.degruyter.com/document/cover/isbn/9780231511117/original ER -