03066nam 2200577 450 991078818140332120200520144314.01-61149-025-1(CKB)2670000000588465(EBL)1903398(MiAaPQ)EBC1903398(Au-PeEL)EBL1903398(CaPaEBR)ebr11025272(OCoLC)898769306(EXLCZ)99267000000058846520100803h20112011 ub| 0engur|n|---|||||rdacontentrdamediardacarrierThe progressive poetics of confusion in the French Enlightenment /John C. O'NealNewark :University of Delaware Press,[2011]©20111 online resource (241 p.)Description based upon print version of record.1-322-52030-5 1-61149-024-3 Includes bibliographical references (pages 215-226) and index.The subversive use of confusion in Marivaux's theater -- Cultivating the reader's critical mind in Crebillon's Les egarements du coeur et de l'esprit -- Telling, reading (or listening), and knowing : interpolated narrative in Voltaire and Diderot -- Diderot and the Enlightenment's poetics of confusion in the Lettre sur les aveugles -- Blurring the boundaries between mind and body : Rousseau and the philosophes on the soul -- Society's confusion in the Lettre a d'Alembert sur les spectacles and the question of Rousseau's modernity -- Gender confusion -- Understanding and interpreting confusion : Philippe Pinel and the invention of psychiatry -- Sade's Justine : a response to the Enlightenment's poetics of confusion.Drawing largely on the etymological meaning of the word 'confusion' as the action of mixing or blending, John C. O'Neal traces the development of a progressive poetics of confusion in the French Enlightenment. This project, he claims, aimed to reject dogmatic thinking in all of its forms and to recognize the need to embrace complexity. Eighteenth-century thinkers used the notion of confusion in a progressive way to reorganize social classes, literary forms, metaphysical substances, scientific methods, and cultural categories such as taste and gender.EnlightenmentFrancePhilosophy, French18th centuryFrench literature18th centuryHistory and criticismComplexity (Philosophy)AmbiguityFranceIntellectual life18th centuryEnlightenmentPhilosophy, FrenchFrench literatureHistory and criticism.Complexity (Philosophy)Ambiguity.840.9/353O'Neal John C.1491154MiAaPQMiAaPQMiAaPQBOOK9910788181403321The progressive poetics of confusion in the French Enlightenment3712816UNINA