s02meeker

Faculty Travel Report: Natania Meeker
“Lewd Imaginings”

In the summer of 2002, I used the grant I was awarded from the Center for Feminist Research to fund a trip to the Bibliothèque nationale de France in Paris. This trip not only allowed me to examine firsthand a range of eighteenth-century texts (primarily on pregnancy and the relationship of femininity to the powers of the imagination), but provided me with the impetus to expand my research in new directions, as well. At the BnF, I studied eighteenth-century representations of feminine libertinage in literary, philosophical, and medical discourse, with a particular focus on texts discussing the role of women’s imaginations in producing bodily symptoms. The work on imagination, femininity, and libertinage I did over the course of this trip will form the basis for a chapter in a new book project tentatively entitled “The Libertine Woman: Femininity, Philosophy, and the Narrative of Enlightenment.”

The chapter I am developing, “Lewd Imaginings: The Pregnant Woman and the Female Libertine in French Enlightenment Society,” revolves around a comparison of medicalized depictions of pregnant women’s ability to alter the bodily formation of fetuses with literary renderings of the sexual effects of the (mis)use of the feminine imagination. Accordingly, I spent several weeks in the Bibliothèque nationale looking both at texts on pregnancy and at portrayals of the role of the imagination in producing or directing women’s desire.
I was particularly interested by a libertine dialogue I came across by a relatively obscure eighteenth-century social theorist, Morelly (whom some scholars have considered a precursor to Rousseau). In this dialogue, Physique de la beauté ou pouvoir naturel de ses charmes (1748), a husband and wife alternate discussions of physics and aesthetics with bouts of elliptically rendered love-making. Desire and feminine pleasure are portrayed as the basis for both physical and aesthetic experience. I also looked at a libertine allegory by a female author, Madame de Puisieux’s Le plaisir et la volupté, conte allégorique, and as a result became interested in visual representations of “la volupté” (voluptuousness) in philosophical texts (one of which is reproduced here). In addition, I read extensively in the eighteenth-century debates around pregnancy and investigated a series of condemnations (religious and philosophical) of the libertine woman reader.
I will present some of the research that I was able to undertake with the help of the Center for Feminist Research in a talk at the 2003 joint meeting of the American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies (ASECS) and the International Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies (ISECS), hosted by UCLA.

I am also planning to use this talk as the basis for both an article and, eventually, a chapter in my book project. I am very grateful to the Center for Feminist Research for its generous grant and for the opportunity to pursue research in a new direction. The support provided by the Center has been not only encouraging but invaluable.


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Faculty Travel Report: Natania Meeker “Lewd Imaginings” In the summer of 2002, I used the grant I was awarded from the Center for Feminist Research to fund a trip to the Bibliothèque nationale de France in Paris. This trip not only allowed me to examine firsthand a range of eighteenth-century texts (primarily on pregnancy and the relationship of femininity to the powers of the imagination), but provided me with the impetus to expand my research in new directions, as well. At the BnF, I studied eighteenth-century representations of feminine libertinage in literary, philosophical, and medical discourse, with a particular focus on texts discussing the role of women’s imaginations in producing bodily symptoms. The work on imagination, femininity, and libertinage I did over the course of this trip will form the basis for a chapter in a new book project tentatively entitled “The Libertine Woman: Femininity, Philosophy, and the Narrative of Enlightenment.” The chapter I am developing, “Lewd Imaginings: The Pregnant Woman and the Female Libertine in French Enlightenment Society,” revolves around a comparison of medicalized depictions of pregnant women’s ability to alter the bodily formation of fetuses with literary renderings of the sexual effects of the (mis)use of the feminine imagination. Accordingly, I spent several weeks in the Bibliothèque nationale looking both at texts on pregnancy and at portrayals of the role of the imagination in producing or directing women’s desire. I was particularly interested by a libertine dialogue I came across by a relatively obscure eighteenth-century social theorist, Morelly (whom some scholars have considered a precursor to Rousseau). In this dialogue, Physique de la beauté ou pouvoir naturel de ses charmes (1748), a husband and wife alternate discussions of physics and aesthetics with bouts of elliptically rendered love-making. Desire and feminine pleasure are portrayed as the basis for both physical and aesthetic experience. I also looked at a libertine allegory by a female author, Madame de Puisieux’s Le plaisir et la volupté, conte allégorique, and as a result became interested in visual representations of “la volupté” (voluptuousness) in philosophical texts (one of which is reproduced here). In addition, I read extensively in the eighteenth-century debates around pregnancy and investigated a series of condemnations (religious and philosophical) of the libertine woman reader. I will present some of the research that I was able to undertake with the help of the Center for Feminist Research in a talk at the 2003 joint meeting of the American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies (ASECS) and the International Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies (ISECS), hosted by UCLA. I am also planning to use this talk as the basis for both an article and, eventually, a chapter in my book project. I am very grateful to the Center for Feminist Research for its generous grant and for the opportunity to pursue research in a new direction. The support provided by the Center has been not only encouraging but invaluable.