Logan J. Connors is Associate Professor of Modern Languages and Literatures at the University of Miami. His next research project investigates connections between theater and the military in France and its colonies from 1680 to 1815.

• AcknowledgmentsIntroduction: theater, emotions, science of manDiderot’s relational dramaFrom religious theaterphobia to theatrical innovationAffect, intentionality, and the history of emotionsChapter 1: Theaterphobia and the transformational power of performanceAnti-theatrical criticism: goals and strategiesCorneille, Nicole, and the reality of emotionsLearning dangerously from the passions: Pierre Nicole’s Traité de la comédieDebating theatrical emotions in the wake of Nicole’s TraitéChapter 2: “Que sur la superficie de notre cœur”: Jean-Baptiste Dubos’s theatrical emotionsEmotional debates: past and presentA different path to aesthetic appreciationThe political case for pleasureDubos’s cognitive-affective sequencesChapter 3: Beyond affect: from Dubos’s “passions superficielles” to Houdar de La Motte’s “sentiments raisonnables”La Motte, the Querelle, and the RegencyLa Motte’s “sentiments raisonnables”The dramaturgical power of intérêtChapter 4: From the page to the stage: La Motte’s theatrical inquiry into the emotionsContext and emotion in Les Macchabées (1721)Intentionality and suspense in Romulus (1722)Inès de Castro (1723) and the emotional politics of intérêtChapter 5: Strategic passions: Marivaux’s Moderne subjectivitiesMarivaux’s trajectory from Moderne to bel esprit to scientist of manLearning from the “organs”: Marivaux’s intuitive ethicsSentimental strategies: Marivaux’s theories of emotion in Le Triomphe de l’amour (1732)Chapter 6: Learning through multiplicité: emotion and distance in the comédie larmoyanteThe decline and rebirth of Nivelle de La Chaussée’s emotional poeticsMeaning-making through the romanesqueThe pièce-cadre: emotion, multiplicité, and spectatorship in La Fausse Antipathie (1733)Conclusion: avant-gardes, emotion, and Enlightenment Works citedIndex

‘Informed by recent work in emotions history and affect theory, the book’s six engaging and original chapters show how this theatrical science repositioned early eighteenth-century spectators, not as hapless victims, but as active learners for whom the theatrical experience was a source of knowledge about the emotions… The Emergence of a Theatrical Science of Man in France makes a strong case for why cultural understandings of theatre as a social practice must also consider intellectual history as well as the dramatic texts that were performed. There are many fine-grained analyses of plays that convincingly illustrate the emotional dynamics described in the book… this book makes for fascinating, provocative reading.’ Annelle Curulla, Restoration and Eighteenth-Century Theatre Research