• Home
• Study
• Study Information
• Modules
• Module Information

The Body in Eighteenth-Century Britain

Module description

This module uses a wide range of sources (including personal sources, medical texts, literature and satires, advertising and images) to recreate the history of the body in eighteenth-century Britain. It will explore different ideals of the body, including changing notions of masculinity and femininity; how the body was understood by medical practitioners; how ‘ordinary’ people understood how their body ‘felt’ or what was wrong with them; disability; the expansion in the types and numbers of products available for the body; and artistic depictions of people. Each theme will be explored in light of recent historical research and debate, and will utilise many different source materials. It does not require any knowledge of medical history or eighteenth-century Britain.

Module aims - intentions of the module

The aim of this module is to:

• Provide an introduction to the important themes surrounding the study of the body in eighteenth-century Britain
• Interpret and analyse a wide range of different types of sources and their inter-relationship, including ‘conduct’ books, popular literature, medical textbooks, lectures, anatomical drawings and images, personal letters and diaries, medical recipe collections, satirical prints, newspapers and medical advertising, portraiture and imagery, and material culture (i.e. things that people used in the eighteenth century)

Intended Learning Outcomes (ILOs)

ILO: Module-specific skills

On successfully completing the module you will be able to...

• 1. Understand and assess the key themes in the history of the body in eighteenth-century Britain
• 2. Work critically with a range of written and visual sources relating to concepts as health and medicine, technology, industrialisation and urbanisation and the sexuality, and how these have shaped historical thinking about the body

ILO: Discipline-specific skills

On successfully completing the module you will be able to...

• 3. Identify the problems of using historical sources, e.g. utility, limitations, etc, and compare the validity of different types of sources
• 4. Present historical arguments and answer questions orally

ILO: Personal and key skills

On successfully completing the module you will be able to...

• 5. Conduct independent study and group work, including the presentation of material for group discussion, developed through the mode of learning
• 6. Digest, select and organise material to produce, to a deadline, a coherent and cogent argument, developed through the mode of assessment
• 7. Write to a tight word-limit

Syllabus plan

Whilst the content may vary from year to year, it is envisioned that it will cover some or all of the following topics:

• Ideals of the body: Was there such a thing as a bodily ideal in the eighteenth century, and how can we access it? Changing notions of masculinity and femininity altered perceptions of how the body could and should look. Sources for this theme might include ‘conduct’ books, popular literature, and new its role in shaping and informing ideals of the body during the Enlightenment.
• The Medical Body. The eighteenth century was an interesting period in terms of how the body was understood by medical practitioners. Older ideas about the body and the humours were challenged by new, enlightened theories about the body. Sources will include medical textbooks, lectures, anatomical drawings and images, to interrogate medical understandings of the body and its constituent parts.
• Health, Illness and the Individual: How did ‘ordinary’ people conceptualise and understand how their body ‘felt’, or what was wrong with them, and how can we access this information? Sources include personal letters and diaries, medical recipe collections, and their role in questioning the lived corporeal experience of eighteenth-century life.
• What was regarded as ‘disability’ in the past, and how were impaired people, and their symptoms, depicted in popular culture and medical texts alike? This theme will involve study of materials from satirical prints, to discussions of the distorted or grotesque bodies.
• The eighteenth century witnessed a great expansion in the types and numbers of goods available, a great many of which involved products for the body. Newspapers and medical advertising, discussing ‘technologies of the body’, and how products for sale can reveal attitudes towards bodily health and appearance.
• Picturing the Body: To what extent are artistic depictions of eighteenth-century people a reliable source? Do they reveal what people actually looked like, or are they too subjective to trust? A range of eighteenth-century portraiture and imagery, from the idealised art of Joshua Reynolds to the emergence of ‘Romantic’ art, are among the sources investigated in this section.
• Artifacts of the Body: What can surviving material culture (i.e. things that people used in the eighteenth century) reveal about the body in the past?

Learning activities and teaching methods (given in hours of study time)

Details of learning activities and teaching methods

Formative assessment

Summative assessment (% of credit)

Details of summative assessment

Details of re-assessment (where required by referral or deferral)

Re-assessment notes

Deferral – if you miss an assessment for certificated reasons judged acceptable by the Mitigation Committee, you will normally be either deferred in the assessment or an extension may be granted. The mark given for a re-assessment taken as a result of deferral will not be capped and will be treated as it would be if it were your first attempt at the assessment.

Referral – if you have failed the module overall (i.e. a final overall module mark of less than 40%) you will be required to submit a further assessment as necessary. If you are successful on referral, your overall module mark will be capped at 40%.

Indicative learning resources - Basic reading

• Diana Donald, The Age of Caricature: Satirical Prints in the Reign of George III (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2006)
• Ludmilla Jordanova, The Look of the Past: Visual and Material Evidence in Historical Practice (Cambridge: CUP, 2012)
• Dorinda Outram, Panorama of the Enlightenment (Los Angeles: John Paul Getty Museum, 2006)
• Roy Porter, Flesh in the Age of Reason (London: Penguin, 2003)
• Carol Reeves, A Cultural History of the Human Body in the Enlightenment (London: Bloomsbury, 2010)
• David M. Turner, Disability in Eighteenth Century England (London: Routledge, 2012)
• Alun Withey, Technology, Self-Fashioning and Politeness in Eighteenth-Century Britain: Refined Bodies (London: Palgrave, 2015)

Indicative learning resources - Web based and electronic resources

• ELE – https://vle.exeter.ac.uk/course/view.php?id=11898 

Key words search

The body, eighteenth-century Britain, medical history