Abstract
Fear in the long eighteenth century was inflected by the specific historical concerns of the time, but it did not stand apart from pre-existing discourses. In this essay, we will address briefly some of the more general issues with the historical legacy of fear before moving to the particular and sometimes peculiar manifestations of fear in this transitional period. We argue that literary, medical, philosophical and religious discourses, among others, played a crucial role in ‘producing’ fear in the alleged Age of Reason. Fear, we will show, was regarded as a complex emotion, and as a phenomenon not solely pathological or negative in its manifestations and uses.
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Notes
- 1.
Robert Burton , Anatomy of Melancholy , ed. A. R. Shilleto, 3 vols (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1926–1927), i: 418–19.
- 2.
Hippocrates, Works of Hippocrates, trans. and ed. W. Jones and E. Withington, 4 vols (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1923–1931), iv: 185.
- 3.
Galen, On the Affected Parts, trans. and ed. Rudolph Siegel (Basel: S. Karger, 1976), 93.
- 4.
Alexander Pope, The Dunciad in Four Books, ed. Valerie Rumbold (London: Longman, rev. edn. 2009), Book IV, l. 656, 360.
- 5.
Robert Burton , Anatomy of Melancholy , ed. A. R. Shilleto, 3 vols (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1926–1927), i: 418–19
- 6.
For a good account of the non-naturals in the eighteenth century, see Roy Porter’s introduction to George Cheyne: The English Malady (1733) (London: Routledge, 1991), xii.
- 7.
Katherine M. Rogers, “Finch’s ‘Candid Account’ vs. Eighteenth-Century Theories of the Spleen,” Mosaic 22, no. 1 (1989): 19.
- 8.
For a scholarly facsimile edition which prints Finch’s Ode and extracts from Stukeley’s Spleen, see Clark Lawlor and Akihito Suzuki, eds, Sciences of Body and Mind, vol. 2 of Literature and Science, 1660–1834, 8 vols., gen. ed. Judith Hawley (London: Pickering & Chatto, 2003), 67–78.
- 9.
John Purcell, A Treatise of Vapours, or Hysterick Fits, 2nd edn, rev. and enlarged (London: Edward Place, 1707), Chapter 3.
- 10.
Stuart Piggott, William Stukeley: An Eighteenth-Century Antiquary (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1950), 57.
- 11.
Katherine M. Rogers, “Finch’s ‘Candid Account’ vs. Eighteenth-Century Theories of the Spleen,” Mosaic 22, no. 1 (1989): 19.
- 12.
Alexander Pope, The Rape of the Lock (1714), Canto IV.
- 13.
Philip Wharton, Duke of Wharton, The Fear of Death . An Ode (London: John Brett, 1739), 1.
- 14.
William Collins, Ode to Fear in The Poems of Gray, Collins, and Goldsmith, ed. Roger Lonsdale (London: Longmans, 1969), 418–23.
- 15.
Jean Delumeau, Sin and Fear: The Emergence of a Western Guilt Culture, 13th–18th Centuries, trans. Eric Nicolson (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1990).
- 16.
See Jeremy Gregory, “Introduction: Transforming the Age of Reason into an Age of Faiths: Or, Putting Religions and Beliefs (Back) into the Eighteenth Century,” Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies 32, no. 3 (2009): 287–305.
- 17.
James Boswell, Boswell Laird of Auchinleck, 1778–1782, ed. Joseph W. Reed and Frederick Pottle (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1993), 164.
- 18.
For a scholarly facsimile edition of Baynard’s poem, see Clark Lawlor and Akihito Suzuki, eds., Sciences of Body and Mind, 7–66.
- 19.
George Cheyne, An Essay of Health and Long Life (London, George Strahan, and J. Leake, 1724), 2; also quoted in the introduction to George Cheyne: The English Malady (1733), ed. and intro. Roy Porter (London: Routledge, 1991), xii.
- 20.
James Carkesse, Lucida Intervalla: Containing Divers Miscellaneous Poems (1679), ed. Michael V. DePorte (Los Angeles: William Andrews Clark Memorial Library, 1979), 12–15.
- 21.
William Belcher, Address to Humanity: Containing, A Letter to Dr. Thomas Monro (1796), in Voices of Madness: Four Pamphlets, 1683–1796, ed. Allan Ingram (Stroud: Sutton Publishing, 1997), 131.
- 22.
Samuel Tuke, Description of The Retreat, An Institution Near York for Insane Persons of the Society of Friends (1813), ed. Richard Hunter and Ida Macalpine (London: Dawsons, 1964), 140–41.
- 23.
Alexander Crichton, An Inquiry into the Nature and Origin of Mental Derangement, 2 vols (London: T. Cadell, Junior, and W. Davies, 1798), I: 178.
- 24.
On this whole area, see Lilian R. Furst, Idioms of Distress: Psychosomatic Disorders in Medical and Imaginative Literature (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2003), 20–22.
- 25.
William Corp, An Essay on the Changes Produced in the Body by Operations of the Mind (London: James Ridgway, 1791), 64.
- 26.
See Owsei Temkin, The Falling Sickness: A History of Epilepsy from the Greeks to the Beginnings of Modern Neurology (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994 edn), 226 and note 105.
- 27.
See The Languages of Psyche: Mind and Body in Enlightenment Thought, ed. G. S. Rousseau (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991), 229. Also Samuel X. Radbill, “Whooping Cough in Fact and Fancy,” Bulletin of the History of Medicine 13 (1943): 33–52.
- 28.
See William Cullen, The Works of William Cullen, ed. John Thomson, 2 vols. (Edinburgh and London: William Blackwood and T. & G. Underwood, 1827), 2: 121.
- 29.
William Falconer, A Dissertation on the Influence of the Passions Upon Disorders of the Body (London: C. Dilley and C. Phillips, 1788), 22, 21.
- 30.
William Forster, A Treatise on the Causes of Most Diseases Incident to Human Bodies, And the Cure of Them (Leeds: James Lister, 1745), 112.
- 31.
Hugh Smythson, The Compleat Family Physician, or, Universal Medical Repository (London: Harrison and Co., 1781), 328.
- 32.
Edmund Burke, A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful, ed. J. T. Boulton, 2nd ed. (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1958), 57.
- 33.
Much has been written about sensibility , but for foundational studies on the cultural and medical connections, see G. J. Barker Benfield, The Culture of Sensibility : Sex and Society in Eighteenth-Century Britain (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1992) and G. S. Rousseau, “Nerves, Spirits, and Fibres: Towards Defining the Origins of Sensibility ,” in Studies in the Eighteenth Century, eds., R. F. Brissenden and J. C. Eade (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1976), 137–57.
- 34.
Indeed Ann Radcliffe, a central figure in the development of the gothic novel, cites Collins’s ‘Ode to Fear’ in The Italian (1797) and The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794).
- 35.
Critics have early noticed Edmund Burke’s influence upon Radcliffe via his concept of the overwhelming and terrifying sublime: see Malcolm Ware, Sublimity in the Novels of Ann Radcliffe, Essays and Studies on English Language and Literature, 2nd Series (Copenhagen: Ejnar Munksgaard, 1963), 25.
- 36.
For an account of Johnson’s melancholia , see Clark Lawlor, From Melancholia to Prozac: A History of Depression (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 1–22; also see Allan Ingram’s Boswell’s Creative Gloom: A Study of Imagery and Melancholy in the Writings of James Boswell (London: Macmillan, 1982), for an extended account of the more positive effects of anxiety (via hypochondria in the eighteenth-century sense) in Johnson’s most famous biographer.
Bibliography
Primary
Belcher, William. Address to Humanity: Containing, A Letter to Dr. Thomas Monro (1796). In Voices of Madness: Four Pamphlets, 1683–1796, edited by Allan Ingram. Stroud: Sutton Publishing, 1997.
Boswell, James. Boswell Laird of Auchinleck, 1778–1782. Edited by Joseph W. Reed and Frederick Pottle. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1993.
Burke, Edmund. A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful. Edited by J. T. Boulton. 2nd ed. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1958.
Burton, Robert. Anatomy of Melancholy. Edited by A. R. Shilleto. 3 vols. London: George Allen & Unwin, 1926–1927.
Carkesse, James. Lucida Intervalla: Containing Divers Miscellaneous Poems (1679). Edited by Michael V. DePorte. Los Angeles: William Andrews Clark Memorial Library, 1979.
Cheyne, George. An Essay of Health and Long Life. London: George Strahan and J. Leake, 1724.
Collins, William. Ode to Fear. In The Poems of Gray, Collins, and Goldsmith. Edited by Roger Lonsdale, 418–23. London: Longmans, 1969.
Corp, William. An Essay on the Changes Produced in the Body by Operations of the Mind. London: James Ridgway, 1791.
Crichton, Alexander. An Inquiry into the Nature and Origin of Mental Derangement. 2 vols. London: T. Cadell, Junior, and W. Davies, 1798.
Cullen, William. The Works of William Cullen. Edited by John Thomson. 2 vols. Edinburgh and London: William Blackwood and T. and G. Underwood, 1827.
Falconer, William. A Dissertation on the Influence of the Passions Upon Disorders of the Body. London: C. Dilley and C. Phillips, 1788.
Forster, William. A Treatise on the Causes of Most Diseases Incident to Human Bodies, and the Cure of Them. Leeds: James Lister, 1745.
Galen. On the Affected Parts. Translated and edited by Rudolph Siegel. Basel: S. Karger, 1976.
Hippocrates. Works of Hippocrates. Translated and edited by W. Jones and E. Withington. 4 vols. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1923–1931.
Pope, Alexander. The Dunciad in Four Books. Edited by Valerie Rumbold, rev. edn. London: Longman, 2009.
Pope, Alexander. The Rape of the Lock (1714).
Porter, Roy, ed. and intro. George Cheyne: The English Malady (1733). London: Routledge, 1991.
Purcell, John. A Treatise of Vapours, or Hysterick Fits. 2nd ed. London: Edward Place, 1707.
Smythson, Hugh. The Compleat Family Physician, or, Universal Medical Repository. London: Harrison and Co., 1781.
Tuke, Samuel. Description of the Retreat, an Institution Near York for Insane Persons of the Society of Friends (1813). Edited by Richard Hunter and Ida Macalpine. London: Dawsons, 1964.
Wharton, Philip. The Fear of Death. An Ode Duke of Wharton. London: John Brett, 1739.
Secondary
Benfield, G. J. Barker. The Culture of Sensibility: Sex and Society in Eighteenth-Century Britain. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1992.
Delumeau, Jean. Sin and Fear: The Emergence of a Western Guilt Culture, 13th–18th Centuries. Translated by Eric Nicolson. New York: St Martin’s Press, 1990.
Furst, Lilian R. Idioms of Distress: Psychosomatic Disorders in Medical and Imaginative Literature. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2003.
Gregory, Jeremy. Introduction: Transforming the Age of Reason into an Age of Faiths: Or, Putting Religions and Beliefs (Back) into the Eighteenth Century. Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies 32, no. 3 (2009): 287–305.
Ingram, Allan. Boswell’s Creative Gloom: A Study of Imagery and Melancholy in the Writings of James Boswell. London: Macmillan, 1982.
Lawlor, Clark, and Akihito Suzuki, eds. Sciences of Body and Mind: Volume 2 of Literature and Science, 1660–1834. 8 vols. General ed. Judith Hawley. London: Pickering & Chatto, 2003.
Lawlor, Clark. From Melancholia to Prozac: A History of Depression. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012.
Piggott, Stuart. William Stukeley: An Eighteenth-Century Antiquary. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1950.
Radbill, Samuel X. Whooping Cough in Fact and Fancy. Bulletin of the History of Medicine 13 (1943): 33–52.
Rogers, Katherine M. Finch’s ‘Candid Account’ vs. Eighteenth-Century Theories of the Spleen. Mosaic 22, no. 1 (1989): 17–27.
Rousseau, G. S. Nerves, Spirits, and Fibres: Towards Defining the Origins of Sensibility. In Studies in the Eighteenth Century, edited by R. F. Brissenden and J. C. Eade, 137–57. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1976.
———. ed. The Languages of Psyche: Mind and Body in Enlightenment Thought. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991.
Temkin, Owsei. The Falling Sickness: A History of Epilepsy from the Greeks to the Beginnings of Modern Neurology. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994.
Ware, Malcolm. Sublimity in the Novels of Ann Radcliffe: Essays and Studies on English Language and Literature. 2nd Series. Copenhagen: Ejnar Munksgaard, 1963.
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Ingram, A., Lawlor, C. (2018). ‘The Gloom of Anxiety’: Fear in the Long Eighteenth Century. In: McCann, D., McKechnie-Mason, C. (eds) Fear in the Medical and Literary Imagination, Medieval to Modern. Palgrave Studies in Literature, Science and Medicine. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-55948-7_4
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