Skip to content

Booksellers & Trade Customers: Sign up for online bulk buying at trade.atlanticbooks.com for wholesale discounts

Booksellers: Create Account on our B2B Portal for wholesale discounts

Sexuality and Cultural Degeneration in Enlightenment France: Medicine and Literature

by Mary McAlpin
Save 35% Save 35%
Current price ₹13,281.00
Original price ₹20,432.00
Original price ₹20,432.00
Original price ₹20,432.00
(-35%)
₹13,281.00
Current price ₹13,281.00

Imported Edition - Ships in 12-14 Days

Free Shipping in India on orders above Rs. 500

Request Bulk Quantity Quote
+91
Book cover type: Hardcover
  • ISBN13: 9781409422419
  • Binding: Hardcover
  • Subject: N/A
  • Publisher: Taylor & Francis
  • Publisher Imprint: Routledge
  • Publication Date:
  • Pages: 208
  • Original Price: GBP 160.0
  • Language: English
  • Edition: N/A
  • Item Weight: 468 grams
  • BISAC Subject(s): European / French and Comparative Literature

In her study of eighteenth-century literature and medical treatises, Mary McAlpin takes up the widespread belief among cultural philosophers of the French Enlightenment that society was gravely endangered by the effects of hyper-civilization. McAlpin's study explores a strong thread in this rhetoric of decline: the belief that premature puberty in young urban girls, supposedly brought on by their exposure to lascivious images, titillating novels, and lewd conversations, was the source of an increasing moral and physical degeneration. In how-to hygiene books intended for parents, the medical community declared that the only cure for this obviously involuntary departure from the "natural" path of sexual development was the increased surveillance of young girls. As these treatises by vitalist and vitalist-inspired physiologists became increasingly common in the 1760s, McAlpin shows, so, too, did the presence of young, vulnerable, and virginal heroines in the era's novels. Analyzing novels by, among others, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Denis Diderot, and Choderlos de Laclos, she offers physiologically based readings of many of the period's most famous heroines within the context of an eighteenth-century discourse on women and heterosexual desire that broke with earlier periods in recasting female and male desire as qualitatively distinct. Her study persuasively argues that the Western view of women's sexuality as a mysterious, nebulous force-Freud's "dark continent"-has its secular origins in the mid-eighteenth century.

Mary McAlpin is Associate Professor of French at the University of Tennessee, USA.

Trusted for over 49 years

Family Owned Company

Secure Payment

All Major Credit Cards/Debit Cards/UPI & More Accepted

New & Authentic Products

India's Largest Distributor

Need Support?

Whatsapp Us