Book ID: CBB912821366

Suffering Scholars: Pathologies of the Intellectual in Enlightenment France (2018)

unapi

Vila, Anne C. (Author)


University of Pennsylvania Press


Publication Date: 2018
Physical Details: 280
Language: English

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.

...More
Reviewed By

Review Sarah Ann Robin (2019) Review of "Suffering Scholars: Pathologies of the Intellectual in Enlightenment France". Social History of Medicine (pp. 639-640). unapi

Review Kathleen Kete (2019) Review of "Suffering Scholars: Pathologies of the Intellectual in Enlightenment France". Bulletin of the History of Medicine (pp. 127-129). unapi

Review Devin Vartija (2019) Review of "Suffering Scholars: Pathologies of the Intellectual in Enlightenment France". Isis: International Review Devoted to the History of Science and Its Cultural Influences (pp. 603-604). unapi

Citation URI
https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB912821366/

Similar Citations

Book Sheriff, Mary D.; (2004)
Moved by Love: Inspired Artists and Deviant Women in Eighteenth-Century France (/isis/citation/CBB000630122/)

Book Jean Starobinski; (2012)
L'Encre de la mélancolie (/isis/citation/CBB020822602/)

Article Ossa-Richardson, Anthony; (2013)
Possession or Insanity? Two Views from the Victorian Lunatic Asylum (/isis/citation/CBB001201306/)

Article Williams, Elizabeth A.; (2010)
Stomach and Psyche: Eating, Digestion, and Mental Illness in the Medicine of Philippe Pinel (/isis/citation/CBB001031521/)

Article Peset, Jose Luis; (2014)
La melancolía en la obra de Pedro Gatell, cirujano y marino ilustrado (/isis/citation/CBB001450515/)

Article Perogamvros, Lampros; Perrig, Stephen; Bogousslavsky, Julien; Giannakopoulos, Panteleimon; (2013)
Friedrich Nietzsche and his Illness: A Neurophilosophical Approach to Introspection (/isis/citation/CBB001320361/)

Article Giordanetti, Piero; (1991)
Kant e Gerard: Nota sulle fonti storiche della teoria Kantiana del “genio” (/isis/citation/CBB000041178/)

Thesis Marcus, Nathalie Charron; (2003)
Creative Symptoms: Embodying the Imagination in Nineteenth-Century France (/isis/citation/CBB001562327/)

Chapter Crépel, Pierre; (2006)
Qu'y a-t-il de nouveau dans l'œuvre scientifique de D'Alembert? (/isis/citation/CBB001024262/)

Book Meghan K. Roberts; (2016)
Sentimental Savants: Philosophical Families in Enlightenment France (/isis/citation/CBB854090040/)

Book Susan A. Ashley; (2018)
“Misfits” in Fin-de-Siècle France and Italy: Anatomies of Difference (/isis/citation/CBB632805594/)

Article Williams, Elizabeth A.; (2007)
Neuroses of the Stomach: Eating, Gender, and Psychopathology in French Medicine, 1800--1870 (/isis/citation/CBB000741717/)

Book Höfer, Bernadette; (2009)
Psychosomatic Disorders in Seventeenth-Century French Literature (/isis/citation/CBB001231104/)

Book Laure Murat; (2014)
The Man Who Thought He Was Napoleon: Toward a Political History of Madness (/isis/citation/CBB627143609/)

Book Beatty, Heather R.; (2012)
Nervous Disease in Late-Eighteenth-Century Britain (/isis/citation/CBB001221157/)

Article Sattar, Atia; (2011)
Certain Madness: Guy de Maupassant and Hypnotism (/isis/citation/CBB001252266/)

Article Åsa Jansson; (2022)
From Melancholia to Depression: Disordered Mood in Nineteenth-Century Psychiatry (/isis/citation/CBB956265052/)

Authors & Contributors
Williams, Elizabeth A.
Meghan K. Roberts
Deke Dusinberre
Marcinów, Mira
Murat, Laure
David Avrom Bell
Concepts
Psychology
Mental disorders and diseases
Creativity; genius
Medicine
Melancholy
Medicine and literature
Time Periods
19th century
18th century
Enlightenment
17th century
20th century, early
Places
France
England
Spain
Poland
Italy
Great Britain
Comments

Be the first to comment!

{{ comment.created_by.username }} on {{ comment.created_on | date:'medium' }}

Log in or register to comment