Overview
"An important contribution to studies of eighteenth-century culture and
to literary history and theory and for those with an interest in horror,
sentimentality, the invention of the modern individual, and ethics of 'the human.'"
-Daniel Cottom, David A. Burr Chair of Letters, University of
Oklahoma
Cruel Delight: Enlightenment Culture and the Inhuman
investigates the fascination with joyful malice in eighteenth-century Europe and how
this obsession helped inform the very meaning of humanity. Steintrager reveals how
the understanding of cruelty moved from an inexplicable, apparently paradoxical
"inhuman" pleasure in the misfortune of others to an eminently human trait stemming
from will and freedom. His study ranges from ethical philosophy and its elaboration
of moral monstrosity as the negation of sentimental benevolence, to depictions of
cruelty-of children mistreating animals, scientists engaged in vivisection, and the
painful procedures of early surgery-in works such as William Hogarth's "The Four
Stages of Cruelty," to the conflict between humane sympathy and radical liberty
illustrated by the writings of the Marquis de Sade. In each instance, the wish to
deny a place for cruelty in an enlightened world reveals a darker side: a deep
investment in depravity, a need to reenact brutality in the name of combating it,
and, ultimately, an erotic attachment to suffering.
Editorials
Choice
"Steintrager (English and comparative literature, Univ. of California, Irvine) offers a thoughtful and original meditation on cruelty as it appears in the English, French, and (to a lesser degree) German literature of the 18th century. Informed but not overwhelmed by Foucauldian theory, the short narrative (just 150 pages of text) is more suggestive than definitive, but it raises useful questions about those who take pleasure in inflicting pain. The 18th century found discussions of cruelty difficult because moral philosophy defined human beings as sympathetic creatures: to be human was to be humane. The prospect that people could enjoy the suffering of others threatened to disturb the age's very definition of humanity. The book's six chapters fall into three groups of two: the first pair examine the place of cruelty in moral philosophy, especially that of the Scottish Enlightenment; the next two explore cruelty to animals, using William Hogarth's prints The Four Stages of Cruelty as a case study; the final two start from the life and works of the Marquis de Sade and take on issues of vivisection and surgery. Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above." —J. T. Lynch, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, Newark, Choice, September 2004— J. T. Lynch, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, Newark