Sublime disorder

Book

This work places Diderot’s fascination with anatomical anomalies or monsters within the context of the history of ideas, philosophy, and science. By chronicling the ideological component of the philosophe’s presentation of monstrosity from the Lettre sur les aveugles to Le Neveu de Rameau, this book reveals Diderot’s ‘random and accidental’ monsters to be, ironically, the most teleological of all beings: created and staged, as it were, for a particular textual world where materialist dogma is as important as disinterested anatomical study.

Acknowledgements
Abbreviations
Introduction
1 From Providence to chance: the emergence of monstrosity in Diderot’s universe
2 Diderot’s revisionism: blindness and Enlightenment in the Lettre sur les aveugles
3 Monsters and the self in Le Rêve de d’Alembert
4 Ethical monstrosity and the Enlightenment’s rejeton Jean-François Rameau
Conclusion
Bibliography
Index

Authors: Curran, A

• Alternative title: physical monstrosity in Diderot's universe
• Publication status: Published
• Peer review status: Peer reviewed
• Publisher: Voltaire Foundation
• Publication date: 2017-11-30
• ISBN: 9780729407496
• Language: English