Imagining Contagion in Early Modern Europe de Claire L. Carlin

Imagining Contagion in Early Modern Europe

Claire L. Carlin

The ideological underpinnings of early modern theories of contagion are dissected in this volume by an integrated team of literary scholars, cultural historians, historians of medicine and art historians. Even today, the spread of disease inspires moralizing discourse and the ostracism of groups thought responsible for contagion; the fear of illness and the desire to make sense of it are demonstrated in the current preoccupation with HIV, SARS, 'mad cow' disease, West Nile virus and avian flu, to cite but a few contemporary examples. Imagining Contagion in Early Modern Europe explores the nature of understanding when humanity is faced with threats to its well-being, if not to its very survival.

Citește tot Restrânge

Cuprins

Introduction; C.L.Carlin PART I: THEORY Fracastoro's De Contagione and Medieval Reflection on 'Action at a Distance': Old and New Trends in the Renaissance Discourse on the Plague; I.Pantin The Animism of Ambient Air at the End of the Middle Ages; C.Gagnon Windows on Contagion; D.Beecher Contagions of Love: Textual Transmission; N.M.Frelick The Devil's Curses: The Demonic Origin of Disease in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries; M.Closson PART II: PRACTICE Apples and Moustaches: Montaigne's Grin in the Face of Infection; H.Cazes Contagion, Honour and Urban Life in Early Modern Germany; M.L.Hammond Corruptible Bodies and Contaminating Technologies: Jesuit Devotional Print and the 1656 Plague in Naples; R.M.San Juan Quarantine and Caress; F.Charbonneau The Preaching Disease: Contagious Ecstasy in 18th-Century Sweden; D.Lindmark PART III: PROJECTION A Contagion at the Source of Discourse on Sexualities: Syphilis during the French Resistance; G.Poirier Contagious Laughter and the Burlesque: From the Literal to the Metaphorical; D.Bertrand The Pathology of Reading: The Novel as an Agent of Contagion; M.Fournier Religious Contagion in Mid-Seventeenth Century England; N.Greenspan Contagion by Conceit: Menstruosity and the Rhetoric of Smallpox into the Age of Innoculation; D.Shuttleton An Afterword on Contagion; D.Beecher General Bibliography

Notă biografică

DONALD BEECHER Professor of English at Carleton University in Ottawa, CanadaDOMINIQUE BERTRAND Professor of French Literature, Université Clermont II, FranceHÉLÈNE CAZES Lecturer in Renaissance French Literature, University of Victoria, CanadaFRÉDÉRIC CHARBONNEAU William Dawson Scholar and Professor of Eighteenth-Century French Literature, McGill University, CanadaMARIANNE CLOSSON Lecturer in Renaissance Literature, Université d'Artois, FranceMICHEL FOURNIER Assistant Professor, Department of French, University of Ottawa, CanadaNANCY M. FRELICK Associate Professor of French, University of British Columbia, CanadaCLAUDE GAGNON Researcher, and founded of Horizons PhilosophiquesNICOLE GREENSPAN ResearcherMITCHELL LEWIS HAMMOND Assistant Professor of History, University of Victoria, CanadaDANIEL LINDMARK Professor of History and History Didactics, Umeå University, SwedenISABELLE PANTIN Professor of Renaissance Literature, Université of Paris X-Nanterre, FranceGUY POIRIER Lecturer in French Renaissance Literature, Department of French Studies, University of Waterloo, CanadaROSE MARIE SAN JUAN Lecturer, Department of History of Art, University College London, UKDAVID SHUTTLETON Lecturer in Eighteenth-Century Literature, University of Wales, Aberystwyth, UK