Bellies, Bowels and Entrails in the Eighteenth Century

Rebecca Anne Barr is Lecturer above the bar at the National University of Ireland, GalwaySylvie Kleiman-Lafon is Maître de conférences at Université Paris 8Sophie Vasset is Maître de conférences at Université Paris-Diderot

• Introduction: entrails and digestion in the eighteenth century – Rebecca Anne Barr, Sylvie Kleiman-Lafon, Sophie VassetPart I: Urban congestion and human digestion1. The belly and the viscera of the capital city – Gilles Thomas 2. The intestinal labours of Paris – Sabine Barles and André Guillerme 3. Digesting in the long eighteenth century – Ian Miller4. The soul in the entrails: the experience of the sick in the eighteenth century – Micheline Louis-CourvoisierPart II: Excremental operations5. Sawney’s seat: the social imaginary of the London bog-house c.1660–c.1800 – Mark Jenner6. Eighteenth-century paper: the readers’ digest – Amélie Junqua 7. ‘Words have no smell’: faecal references in eighteenth-century French théâtre de société – Jennifer Ruimi8. The legibility of the bowels: Lichtenberg’s excretory vision of Hogarth’s A Harlot’s Progress – Anthony MahlerPart III: Burlesque bellies9. Parodies of pompous knowledge: treatises on farting – Guilhem Armand 10. Potbelly, paunch and innards: variations on the abdomen in Marivaux’s L'Homère travesti and Télémaque travesti – Clémence Aznavour11. Desire, disgust and indigestibility in John Cleland’s Memoirs of a Coxcomb – Rebecca Anne Barr 12. Rotund bellies and double chins: Hogarth’s bodies – Frédéric Ogée Part IV: Visualising the viscera13. Iconography of the belly: eighteenth-century satirical prints – Barbara Stentz14. Visceral visions: art, pedagogy and politics in Revolutionary France – Dorothy Johnson15. The saints of the entrails and the bowels of the earth – Jacques GélisSelect bibliographyIndex

‘“The fart, unpent, that croons its air / Often foils death, dispels despair.” Bellies, bowels and entrails, while it contains a wealth of material with comic potential that was often realised, is certainly not destined to be ‘bumfodder’, a common fate for much eighteenth-century literature. This fascinating, scholarly and entertaining examination of all things digestive advances the burgeoning field of stomach studies, especially by giving it a multi-disciplinary and European perspective. Any reader interested in the eighteenth century, or in medical humanities generally, will find this excellent volume crucial to their understanding of the practicalities and metaphorics of this most fundamental (forgive the pun) area of human experience.’Clark Lawlor, Professor of Eighteenth-Century English Literature at Northumbria University'One does not have to venture very far into eighteenth-century literary and artistic culture to come across distended bellies, visceral obsessions and technicolour excretions. Bellies, bowels and entrails presents an adventurous exploration of this dimension of the eighteenth-century world, engaging with a gloriously Rabelaisian array of forms of human viscerality. Bringing together high-calibre essays from a wide range of disciplinary fields, the volume manages to be as consistently absorbing and enlightening as it is entertaining, amusing and affecting.'Colin Jones, Professor of History at Queen Mary University of London'On the whole, this collection will reward readers from many disciplines while it amply demonstrates the shift to “the darker side of the Enlightenment” (5) that the editors identify in eighteenth-century studies.'Eighteenth-Century Fiction