Bellies, Bowels and Entrails in the Eighteenth Century

‘“The fart, unpent, that croons its air / Often foils death, dispels despair.” Bellies, bowels and entrails, while it contains a wealth of material with comic potential that was often realised, is certainly not destined to be ‘bumfodder’, a common fate for much eighteenth-century literature. This fascinating, scholarly and entertaining examination of all things digestive advances the burgeoning field of stomach studies, especially by giving it a multi-disciplinary and European perspective. Any reader interested in the eighteenth century, or in medical humanities generally, will find this excellent volume crucial to their understanding of the practicalities and metaphorics of this most fundamental (forgive the pun) area of human experience.’
Clark Lawlor, Professor of Eighteenth-Century English Literature at Northumbria University

'One does not have to venture very far into eighteenth-century literary and artistic culture to come across distended bellies, visceral obsessions and technicolour excretions. Bellies, bowels and entrails presents an adventurous exploration of this dimension of the eighteenth-century world, engaging with a gloriously Rabelaisian array of forms of human viscerality. Bringing together high-calibre essays from a wide range of disciplinary fields, the volume manages to be as consistently absorbing and enlightening as it is entertaining, amusing and affecting.'
Colin Jones, Professor of History at Queen Mary University of London

'On the whole, this collection will reward readers from many disciplines while it amply demonstrates the shift to “the darker side of the Enlightenment” (5) that the editors identify in eighteenth-century studies.'
Eighteenth-Century Fiction