The sensational past : how the Enlightenment changed the way we use our senses
Title:
The sensational past : how the Enlightenment changed the way we use our senses
Author:
Purnell, Carolyn, author.
ISBN:
9780393249378
Personal Author:
Edition:
First Edition.
Publication Information:
New York :
W. W. Norton & Company,
2017.
Physical Description:
302 pages ; 22 cm.
Contents:
The self-made man: creating genius in the Enlightenment -- Drinking your way to a new you: self-medication, sensibility, and sociability at the cafø -- Living in a world of sound: the pitch-black markets of Paris -- Becoming useful citizens: the talents of blind (and blindfolded) children -- Blowing smoke up the ass: aromatic medicine and useful science -- What is a sense?: sex, self-preservation, pleasure, and pain -- Harmonious nature: the cat piano, the ocular harpsichord, and scales of scent and taste -- Calling it macaroni: the politics of popular pigments -- The gourmand's gaze: visual eating in the postrevolutionary period -- Digesting nature: exotic animal dining clubs in nineteenth-century England -- Seeing is not believing.
Abstract:
An exploration of the eccentric ways that human senses were perceived throughout the Enlightenment era reveals how the way we think about the senses has changed throughout history and how today's sensory experiences are representative of the beliefs of earlier times.
