The Body As Text

Download or read book Body and Text in the Eighteenth Century written by Veronica Kelly and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 1994-09-01 with total page 364 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Twelve scholars from the fields of English, French, and German literature here examine the complex ways in which the human body becomes the privileged semiotic model through which eighteenth-century culture defines its political and conceptual centers. In making clear that the deployment of the body varies tremendously depending on what is meant by the 'human body', the essays draw on popular literature, poetics and aesthetics, garden architecture, physiognomy, beauty manuals, pornography and philosophy, as well as on canonical works in the genres of the novel and the drama.