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Suffering Scholars : Pathologies of the Intellectual in Enlightenment France / Anne C. Vila.

By: Material type: TextTextSeries: Intellectual History of the Modern AgePublisher: Philadelphia : University of Pennsylvania Press, [2018]Copyright date: ©2018Description: 1 online resource (280 p.)Content type:
Media type:
Carrier type:
ISBN:
  • 9780812294804
Subject(s): DDC classification:
  • 305.5/52094409033 23
LOC classification:
  • DC33.4 .V49 2018eb
Other classification:
  • online - DeGruyter
Online resources:
Contents:
Frontmatter -- Contents -- List of Abbreviations -- Introduction -- 1. Medicine and the Cult of the Thinker, 1750–89 -- 2. The Ardor for Study: Inwardness and the Zealous Cerebralist -- 3. Passions and the Philosophe -- 4. Corporality and the Life of the Mind in Voltaire and Diderot -- 5. Melancholy, Genius, and Intellectual Identity: The Cases of Rousseau and Stael -- 6. Refashioning Intellectual Pathologies in the Wake of the Revolution -- Epilogue. Not So Singular, After All? -- Notes -- Bibliography of Primary Sources -- Index -- Acknowledgments
Summary: As early as Aristotle's Problem XXX, intellectual superiority has been linked to melancholy. The association between sickness and genius continued to be a topic for discussion in the work of early modern writers, most recognizably in Robert Burton's The Anatomy of Melancholy. But it was not until the eighteenth century that the phenomenon known as the "suffering scholar" reached its apotheosis, a phenomenon illustrated by the popularity of works such as Samuel-Auguste Tissot's De la santé des gens de lettres, first published in 1768. Though hardly limited to French-speaking Europe, the link between mental endeavor and physical disorder was embraced with particular vigor there, as was the tendency to imbue intellectuals with an aura of otherness and detachment from the world. Intellectuals and artists were portrayed as peculiarly susceptible to altered states of health as well as psyche—the combination of mental intensity and somatic frailty proved both the privileges and the perils of knowledge-seeking and creative endeavor.In Suffering Scholars, Anne C. Vila focuses on the medical and literary dimensions of the cult of celebrity that developed around great intellectuals during the French Enlightenment. Beginning with Tissot's work, which launched a subgenre of health advice aimed specifically at scholars, she demonstrates how writers like Voltaire, Diderot, Rousseau, and Mme de Staël, responded to the "suffering scholar" syndrome and helped to shape it. She traces the ways in which this syndrome influenced the cultural perceptions of iconic personae such as the philosophe, the solitary genius, and the learned lady. By showing how crucial the so-called suffering scholar was to debates about the mind-body relation as well as to sex and sensibility, Vila sheds light on the consequences book-learning was thought to have on both the individual body and the body politic, not only in the eighteenth century but also into the decades following the Revolution.
Holdings
Item type Current library Call number URL Status Notes Barcode
eBook eBook Biblioteca "Angelicum" Pont. Univ. S.Tommaso d'Aquino Nuvola online online - DeGruyter (Browse shelf(Opens below)) Online access Not for loan (Accesso limitato) Accesso per gli utenti autorizzati / Access for authorized users (dgr)9780812294804

Frontmatter -- Contents -- List of Abbreviations -- Introduction -- 1. Medicine and the Cult of the Thinker, 1750–89 -- 2. The Ardor for Study: Inwardness and the Zealous Cerebralist -- 3. Passions and the Philosophe -- 4. Corporality and the Life of the Mind in Voltaire and Diderot -- 5. Melancholy, Genius, and Intellectual Identity: The Cases of Rousseau and Stael -- 6. Refashioning Intellectual Pathologies in the Wake of the Revolution -- Epilogue. Not So Singular, After All? -- Notes -- Bibliography of Primary Sources -- Index -- Acknowledgments

restricted access online access with authorization star

http://purl.org/coar/access_right/c_16ec

As early as Aristotle's Problem XXX, intellectual superiority has been linked to melancholy. The association between sickness and genius continued to be a topic for discussion in the work of early modern writers, most recognizably in Robert Burton's The Anatomy of Melancholy. But it was not until the eighteenth century that the phenomenon known as the "suffering scholar" reached its apotheosis, a phenomenon illustrated by the popularity of works such as Samuel-Auguste Tissot's De la santé des gens de lettres, first published in 1768. Though hardly limited to French-speaking Europe, the link between mental endeavor and physical disorder was embraced with particular vigor there, as was the tendency to imbue intellectuals with an aura of otherness and detachment from the world. Intellectuals and artists were portrayed as peculiarly susceptible to altered states of health as well as psyche—the combination of mental intensity and somatic frailty proved both the privileges and the perils of knowledge-seeking and creative endeavor.In Suffering Scholars, Anne C. Vila focuses on the medical and literary dimensions of the cult of celebrity that developed around great intellectuals during the French Enlightenment. Beginning with Tissot's work, which launched a subgenre of health advice aimed specifically at scholars, she demonstrates how writers like Voltaire, Diderot, Rousseau, and Mme de Staël, responded to the "suffering scholar" syndrome and helped to shape it. She traces the ways in which this syndrome influenced the cultural perceptions of iconic personae such as the philosophe, the solitary genius, and the learned lady. By showing how crucial the so-called suffering scholar was to debates about the mind-body relation as well as to sex and sensibility, Vila sheds light on the consequences book-learning was thought to have on both the individual body and the body politic, not only in the eighteenth century but also into the decades following the Revolution.

Mode of access: Internet via World Wide Web.

In English.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 04. Okt 2022)