Engendering Images of Man in the Long Eigteenth Century

Walter Göbel, Saskia Schabio, Martin Windisch (Eds.)

Engendering Images of Man in the Long Eighteenth Century

ISBN 978-3-88476-469-5, ISBN 3-88476-469-1, 296 S., kt., € 28,00 (2001)

Images of Man has a twofold implication, directing our attention towards the multiplication of human possibilities as such and specifically of articulations of the male gender in interplay with the female. Both movements toward systematic complexity and diversity are interrelated and linked with the birth of anthropology or the science of man in the eigtheenth century.

Plastic man became the most interesting object of study as the intricacies of mind and body were explored and new anatomical details (e.g. th nerves) were discovered, adding to man's and woman's complexity. Philosophy itself became humanized as it focused upon epistemology and moral philosophy. Gender roles became permeable, men turning into effeminate 'men of feeling' and women into selfassured and sometimes even unemotional 'women of sense' by the end of the century, most programmatically during the politicization of gender roles in the revolutionary 1790s.

This volume traces some of the new forms of self-fashioning in the age of elightenment.