The aesthetic body

"This book traces the radical transformation that occurred in the understanding of the biological body and of human incarnation beginning in the first third of the seventeenth century. The study is the first to detail those important changes and to elaborate the profound impact that the new corporal model had on contemporary culture. Dr. Koch argues cogently that in the secular culture of that period there are two principal new determinations of the biological body: first, the body, rather than the psyche, becomes the source and site of the production of passion and sensibility; and second, sensibility and passions are deemed the products of forces of a universe of plenitude and matter in motion, which act on the body.

Those two developments converge to construct an aesthetic body; that is, in its full etymological sense, a body whose principal functions are the production of sensation and affectivity. This study examines the importance of the body in the determination of sensibility and passion in French culture of the seventeenth century." "The Aesthetic Body will engage readers with interests in literature, philosophy, the history of ideas, the history of science and medicine, cultural history, and political theory of the French early modem period."--Jacket.