Taste and the Senses in the Eighteenth Century

The third volume in the LAPASEC series (Landau-Paris Studies on the Eighteenth Century), this collection assembles the best contributions to the symposia on taste and the senses organized between 2007 and 2009 by Peter Wagner and Frédéric Ogée. The essays address the five human senses in the context of the Enlightenment discussions of the aesthetics of taste. In the long eighteenth century, taste was an issue relating to aesthetics, philosophy, art history, literature and literary history, but also to social history, class distinctions, and gender. Beginning with an introduction that highlights the most important aspects by way of occasional looks at their treatment in William Hogarth’s satiric art, the contribution to this volume are by younger scholars from France, Germany and North America. Throwing new critical light on highly controversial issues hotly debated by the arbiters of taste (from journalists to artists and novelists), the essays presented here are meant to enrich the scholarly discussion of a major preoccupation of Enlightenment discourses. Last but not least, the editors hope to draw the attention of the English-speaking world of research to the promising work of scholars whose native language is not English. From an occasionally marginalized (mainland) European perspective in eighteenth-century studies, we shyly proclaim, in the words of the inimitable Georges Brassens, “nous, au village, aussi, l’on a de beaux assassinats.“