A01=Andrew H. Clark
Animal Kingdom
art criticism analysis
Author_Andrew H. Clark
Basse Fondamentale
body politic relationships
Boucher's Paintings
Boucher’s Paintings
bouffons
Category=DSBD
Category=DSK
Chardin's Paintings
Chardin’s Paintings
Corps Sonore
De Physiologie
des
Diderot's Aesthetics
Diderot's Interest
Diderot's Text
Diderot's Thought
Diderot's Work
diderots
Diderot’s Aesthetics
Diderot’s Interest
Diderot’s Text
Diderot’s Thought
Diderot’s Work
Dissonant Chord
Eighteenth Century Music
eighteenth-century epistemology
Elisabeth De Fontenay
eq_bestseller
eq_biography-true-stories
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
fils
Fragonard's Painting
Fragonard’s Painting
La Religieuse
Le Disciple
Le Fils Naturel
Life Forms
Musical Dissonance
Musical Thought
naturel
philosophy of science
physiological models
physiologie
querelle
Rameau's Nephew
Rameau's Theory
Rameau’s Nephew
Rameau’s Theory
Sensorium Commune
somatic theory
text
unstable part-whole dynamics in Diderot
Vibrating String
work
writing
Product details
- ISBN 9780754654384
- Weight: 520g
- Dimensions: 156 x 234mm
- Publication Date: 21 Jul 2008
- Publisher: Taylor & Francis Ltd
- Publication City/Country: GB
- Product Form: Hardback
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Drawing upon the rich heterogeneity of Denis Diderot's texts-whether scientific, aesthetic, philosophic or literary-Andrew Clark locates and examines an important epistemological shift both in Diderot's oeuvre and in the eighteenth century more generally. In Western Europe during the 1750s, the human body was reconceptualized as physiologists began to emphasize the connections, communication, and relationships among relatively autonomous somatic parts and an animated whole. This new conceptualization was part of a larger philosophical and epistemological shift in the relationship of part to whole, as discovered in that of bee to swarm; organ to body; word to phrase; dissonant chord to harmonic progression; article to encyclopedia; and individual citizen to body politic. Starting from Diderot's concept of the body as elaborated from the physiological research and speculation of contemporaries such as Haller and Bordeu, the author investigates how the logic of an unstable relationship of part to whole animates much of Diderot's writing in genres ranging from art criticism to theatre to philosophy of science. In particular, Clark examines the musical figure of dissonance, a figure used by Diderot himself, as a useful theoretical model to give insight into these complex relations. This study brings a fresh approach to the classic question of whether Diderot's work represents a consistent point of view or a series of ruptures and changes of position.
Andrew H. Clark is Professor of French and Comparative Literature at Fordham University
