Hostname: page-component-7479d7b7d-c9gpj Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-12T01:31:25.000Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

De Quincey's Crazy Body

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 October 2020

Paul Youngquist
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

De Quincey's Confessions of an English Opium Eater evaluates life from the perspective of digestion instead of cognition. The text mounts a critique of Kant's transcendental philosophy that tests the freedom of reason against the fate of eating. De Quincey's “The Last Days of Immanuel Kant” relates details of the philosopher's life and diet that corroborate this critique. Opium becomes the hero of the Confessions because eating it changes De Quincey physiologically, forcing him to confront the body's materiality. From the opium eater's perspective, the beautiful and the sublime occur as effects, not of representation, but of incorporation, giving rise to the possibility of material thought. A specialized diet also challenges the norms of public medicine, such as those expressed in Thomas Beddoes's Hygiea, which grounds public health in private reflection and responsibility. De Quincey's Confessions affirms a subjectivity that is the effect of daily dosing.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 114 , Issue 3: Material Evidence , May 1999 , pp. 346 - 358
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1999

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Works Cited

Ashton, Rosemary. The German Idea: Four English Writers and the Reception of German Thought, 1800–1860. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1980.Google Scholar
Barrell, John. The Infection of Thomas De Quincey: A Psychopathology of Imperialism. New Haven: Yale UP, 1991.Google Scholar
Beddoes, Thomas. Hygiea; or, Essays Moral and Medical on the Causes Affecting the Personal State of Our Middling and Affluent Classes. 4 vols. Bristol, 1802.Google Scholar
Clej, Alina. A Genealogy of the Modern Self: Thomas De Quincey and the Intoxication of Writing. Stanford: Stanford UP, 1995.10.1515/9780804780766CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Coleridge, Samuel Taylor. Biographia Literaria. Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Ed. Jackson, H. J. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1985. 155–482.Google Scholar
Deleuze, Gilles. Kant's Critical Philosophy. Trans. Tomlinson, Hugh and Habberjam, Barbara. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1984.Google Scholar
Deleuze, Gilles, and Guattari, Félix. Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Trans. Robert Hurley, Mark Seem, and Helen R. Lane. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1983. “Extract.” The Oxford English Dictionary. 2nd ed. 1989.Google Scholar
Foucault, Michel. The Birth of the Clinic: An Archaeology of Medical Perception. Trans. Smith, A. M. Sheridan. New York: Pantheon, 1973.Google Scholar
Foucault, Michel. The Care of the Self. Trans. Hurley, Robert. New York: Vintage, 1986.Google Scholar
Kant, Immanuel. Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View. Trans. Gregor, Mary. The Hague: Nijhoff, 1974.10.1007/978-94-010-2018-3CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kant, Immanuel. The Conflict of the Faculties. Trans. Gregor, Mary. New York: Abaris, 1979.Google Scholar
Kant, Immanuel. Critique of Judgment. Trans. Bernard, J. H. New York: Hafner, 1951.Google Scholar
Kaufmann, Walter, trans. Ecce Homo. On the Genealogy of Morals and Ecce Homo. By Friedrich Nietzsche. New York: Vintage, 1967. 213–335.Google Scholar
Krell, David Farrell. Contagion: Sexuality. Disease, and Death in German Idealism and Romanticism. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1998.Google Scholar
Krell, David Farrell. Infectious Nietzsche. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1996.Google Scholar
Leask, Nigel. British Romantic Writers and the East: Anxieties of Empire. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1992.Google Scholar
Leask, Nigel. “Toward a Universal Aesthetic: De Quincey on Murder as Carnival and Tragedy.” Questioning Romanticism. Ed. Beer, John. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1995. 92–120.Google Scholar
Lindop, Grevel. The Opium Eater: A Life of Thomas De Quincey. London: Dent, 1981.Google Scholar
Masson, David, ed. The Collected Writings of Thomas De Quincey. 14 vols. London: Black. 1896–97.Google Scholar
McDonagh, Josephine. De Quincey's Disciplines. Oxford: Clarendon, 1994.Google Scholar
Nietzsche, Friedrich. Ecce Homo. Nietzsche: Werke. Ed. Colli, Giorgio and Montinari, Mazzino. Part 6, vol. 3. Berlin: De Gruyter, 1967. 253–372.Google Scholar
Nietzsche, Friedrich. The Gay Science. Trans. Kaufmann, Walter. New York: Vintage, 1974.Google Scholar
Plotz, Judith. “On Guilt Considered as One of the Fine Arts: De Quincey's Criminal Investigations.” Wordsworth Circle 19 (1988): 83–88.Google Scholar
Russett, Margaret. De Quincey's Romanticism: Canonical Minority and the Forms of Transmission. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1997.Google Scholar
Rzepka, Charles. “The Body, the Book, and ‘the True Hero of the Tale’: De Quincey's 1821 Confessions and Romantic Autobiography as Cultural Artifact.” Studies in Autobiography. Ed. Olney, James. New York: Oxford UP, 1988. 141–50.Google Scholar
Rzepka, Charles. Sacramental Commodities: Gift, Text, and the Sublime in De Quincey. Amherst: U of Massachusetts P, 1995.Google Scholar
Ward, Aileen, ed. Confessions of an English Opium Eater. Confessions of an English Opium Eater and Other Writings. By Thomas De Quincey. New York: Signet, 1966. 21–111.Google Scholar
Wellek, René. Confrontations: Studies in the Intellectual and Literary Relations between Germany, England, and the United States during the Nineteenth Century. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1965.10.1515/9781400877058CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wellek, René. A History of Modern Criticism, 1750–1950. Vol. 3. New Haven: Yale UP, 1965.Google Scholar
Wellek, René. Immanuel Kant in England. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1931.Google Scholar