The Cure of the Passions and the Origins of the English Novel

This 2001 study examines the role of the passions in the rise of the English novel. Geoffrey Sill locates the origins of the novel in the breakdown of medical and religious dogmas prior to the eighteenth century, leading to a crisis in the regulation of the passions which the novel helped to address. He examines medical, religious and literary efforts to anatomize the passions, paying particular attention to the works of Dr Alexander Monro of Edinburgh, Reverend John Lewis of Margate and Daniel Defoe, novelist and natural historian of the passions. He shows that the figure of the 'physician of the mind' features prominently not only in Defoe's novels, but also in those of Fielding, Richardson, Smollett, Burney and Edgeworth. The 'rise' of the novel comes to an end when the passions give way at the end of the century to the more modern concept of the emotions.

List of illustrations; Acknowledgments; Introduction: the passions and the English novel; 1. The physician and the mind from Zeno to Arbuthnot; 2. The heart, the Holy Ghost, and the ghost of Michael Servetus; 3. Alexander Monro and the anatomist's gaze; 4. Defoe and the natural history of the passions; 5. Crusoe in the cave: family passions in Robinson Crusoe; 6. The sinner, the saddler and the brewer's wife: three case studies in desire; 7. 'Surprised by his passions': the ghost of Servetus and the reverend John Lewis; 8. 'Mr Jones had somewhat about him': Henry Fielding and the moral sense; 9. Burney, Richardson, and the 'extirpation' of the passions; Epilogue: Belinda and the end of the origins; Appendix 1. Who was 'Betty'?; Appendix 2. Who was 'Sir Benjamin Hodges'?; Appendix 3. The history of the 'history of the life of Servetus', told in letters; Bibliography; Index.

This 2001 book examines the role of the passions in the rise of the English novel. Sill examines medical, religious and literary efforts to anatomize the passions and shows that the figure of the 'physician of the mind' features prominently in novels by Defoe, Fielding, Richardson, Smollett, Burney and Edgeworth.

Geoffrey Sill is Associate Professor of English and Chair of his department at Rutgers University in Camden, New Jersey. He is the author of Defoe and the Idea of Fiction (1983) and the editor of Walt Whitman of Mickle Street (1994) and other books. He is the Defoe editor of The Scriblerian and an active member of the American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies.