Nervous Acts: Essays on Literature and Sensibility

Between 1970 and 2000 George Rousseau wrote a series of landmark essays about the role of nervous physiology in literature and history that altered the landscape of eighteenth-century studies. The essays changed the direction of some Enlightenment thought and configured the rise of sensibility in new ways. Since then much work has been done which engages, challenges, adopts, and expands on Rousseau's original discussions. This volume collects and reprints the most important of those essays and surveys the current critical moment as it touches on the vocabularies Rousseau pioneered. The introduction surveys nerves from the ancients to the moderns, and then selects examples in literature where the literary and moral elements of nervous discourse are especially prominent. The epilogue engages with the critical reception of the original essays and provides biographical and critical reflections on the legacy of the nerves in literary scholarship.