The Perfecting of Nature - by Josh Doty (Paperback)

About the Book

"The nineteenth century saw a marked change in how Americans viewed and understood the human corporal form. Cookbook writers drew from physiologists' studies of the nervous pathways between the stomach and the brain to promote their recipes as good for mental health. These new ways of understanding the body reflect how Americans were beginning to see the body's constituent parts as interconnected. From the Transcendentalists' idealized concept of self to the rise of Darwinian Theory after the Civil War, the era and its writers redefined the human body as a deeply reactive and malleable object. In this book, Josh Doty explores the 'plasticity' of the antebellum American body-the body's ability to react and change from interior and exterior forces-and argues that literature helped to shape the cultural reception of these ideas"--

Book Synopsis

The nineteenth century saw a marked change in how Americans viewed and understood the human form. These new ways of understanding the body reflect how Americans were beginning to see the body's constituent parts as interconnected. From the transcendentalists' idealized concept of self to the rise of Darwinian theory after the Civil War, the era and its writers redefined the human body as both deeply reactive and malleable. Josh Doty explores antebellum American conceptions of bioplasticity--the body's ability to react and change from interior and exterior forces--and argues that literature helped to shape the cultural reception of these ideas. These new ways of thinking about the body's responsiveness to its surroundings enabled exercise fanatics, cold-water bathers, cookbook authors, and everyday readers to understand the tractable body as a way to reform the United States at the physiological level.

Doty weaves together analysis of religious texts, nutritional guides, and canonical literature to show the fluid relationship among bodies, literature, and culture in nineteenth-century America.

Review Quotes

"A valuable summary of mid-nineteenth-century ideas about health and mind-body relations in the decades when concepts of evolution and heredity were being developed. This book is equally important as a history or American studies text as it is for readers of literature."--Journal of American History

"There is much to admire in The Perfecting of Nature. Its surveys of popular somatic reform literatures compellingly demonstrate why these deserve our careful attention, and it convincingly demonstrates the subtle yet pervasive reverberations of these theories across the literary texts it examines."--ALH Online Review