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WORK TITLE: The Sensational Past
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WEBSITE: https://www.carolynpurnell.com/
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STATE: CA
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https://www.linkedin.com/in/carolyn-purnell-ab260b52/
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PERSONAL
Female.
EDUCATION:Pomona College, B.A., 2006; University of Chicago, M.A., 2007, Ph.D., 2013
ADDRESS
CAREER
Oakwood Secondary School, North Hollywood, CA, professor of history, 2016–. Von Holst Prize Lecturer, University of Chicago, 2013; visiting assistant professor, Illinois Institute of Technology, 2013-16. Also worked at a library and a tractor dealership.
AVOCATIONS:Journalism and photography.
WRITINGS
Contributor to periodicals, including Apartment Therapy.com. Contributor of photographs to Good Housekeeping.
SIDELIGHTS
Oakwood Secondary School professor of history Carolyn Purnell specializes in the study of Europe social and intellectual trends during the eighteenth century. Her areas of research, the historian explained in a short autobiographical sketch appearing on her home page, the Carolyn Purnell Website, include “France, history of sexuality, the eighteenth century, the history of science and medicine, and the history of the senses.” Her popular monograph, The Sensational Past: How the Enlightenment Changed the Way We Use Our Senses, explores the influence of the use of the senses on a period that has widely been regarded as intellectural and divorced from sensation. “With its episodic approach and a propensity for synthesis,” explained Mark Spencer in Library Journal, “this book is largely intended for general readers.” “Purnell effectively scrutinizes modern perceptions of the Enlightenment as a time wholly dominated by reason and the scientific method,” said a Kirkus Reviews contributor. “She also examines the dark side of the era’s theories of physical perfectibility.” “Purnell dives deep into the fascinating, illuminating, and occasionally bizarre history of sensation in the eighteenth century,” said a UChicagoArts contributor, “exploring … the complex theoretical developments of the Enlightenment philosophes.“
Purnell points out that discussion of the concept and role of feeling through the senses was widespread during the Enlightenment. “Talk of the senses and sensation seemed to be everywhere in the long eighteenth century, popping up in every genre imaginable,” the historian stated in her introduction to The Sensational Past. “Just about everyone seemed to agree that the senses were the key to knowledge and meaningful conversation. Novelists and poets dove headfirst into the emotional world of sensory felling through the concept of sensibility, which you may know from Jane Austen’s novel Sense and Sensibility. New theories of the brain and nervous system abounded in this era, replacing older ideas of sensation and perception, and physicians were increasingly fascinated with the relationship between physical stimuli and mental processes.” The historian “finds an emblematic juxtaposition of concern and cruelty,” declared a Publishers Weekly reviewer, “in the ways in which Enlightenment philosophes analyzed the senses.”
The fascination that philosophes had with sensation moved contemporary thinkers onto strange paths, ranging from investigations of the relationship between pain and pleasure (the Marquis de Sade was a philosophe) to something as commonplace as drinking coffee or lemonade. “This awakening of our senses led to some astonishing results, from sensible to senseless,” explained Michael Taube in the Claremont Review of Books. “For instance, Purnell wrote that if `Enlightenment philosophy was born out of a critical spirit, a love of ideas, and a fascination with self-creation, the café was its cradle.’ Seventeenth-century France, where “there was no shortage of places where one could get a drink,” was the starting point in this trend…. This led to the rise of the limonadiers, or “lemonaders.” People started flocking to these locations in search of flavored lemonades and drinks, candies, desserts, and liqueurs.” “Purnell assembles a wide array of historical evidence, concrete phenomena that show how theories about physical sensation played out in the real world,” stated Ron Hogan in the Dallas News. “When she talks about the emergence of café culture, for example, she shows wealthy Parisians seeking out the exotic pleasures of coffee and hot cocoa as a marker of social status, but also describes how sophisticates of the time believed the actual experience of drinking a cup of coffee could be an exercise in self-improvement.” The Sensational Past, wrote Bill Thompson in the Charleston Post and Courier, is “a book brimming with provocative asides.” “Purnell … is an excellent excavator of facts curious and bizarre,” Thompson continued, “but her goal is for readers to ponder the sensory environment we inhabit, and she succeeds in doing just that. If the book’s speculations are not persuasive in every case, it is hard to dispute Purnell’s broader conclusions or not be infected, delightfully, by her enthusiasms.”
BIOCRIT
BOOKS
Purnell, Carolyn, The Sensational Past: How the Enlightenment Changed the Way We Use Our Senses, W.W. Norton (New York, NY), 2017.
PERIODICALS
Dallas News, February 9, 2017, Ron Hogan, With Coffee and Cat Pianos, How Philosophers Came to Their Senses.”
Kirkus Reviews, December 1, 2016, review of The Sensational Past.
Library Journal, January 1, 2017, Mark Spencer, review of The Sensational Past, p. 103.
Post and Courier (Charleston, SC), December 25, 2016, Bill Thompson, review of The Sensational Past.
Publishers Weekly, December 19, 2016, review of The Sensational Past, p. 117.
ONLINE
Carolyn Purnell Website, https://www.carolynpurnell.com (October 25, 2017), author profile.
Claremont Review of Books, http://www.claremont.org/ (June 21, 2017), Michael Taube, review of A Sense of Enlightenment.
UChicagoArts, https://arts.uchicago.edu/ (February 20, 2017), review of The Sensational Past.
Carolyn Purnell
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History Professor, Freelance Writer, Home Interiors Photographer
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Carolyn Purnell received her B.A. from Pomona College in History and English and her M.A. and Ph.D. from University of Chicago in History. Her first book, The Sensational Past (W.W. Norton and Company, 2017) , focuses on the senses in the 18th and 19th centuries.
Her specialty is European history, with a particular interest in eighteenth-century France. Her dissertation dealt with how sensationalist philosophy and medical theory on the senses translated into concrete social programs and institutions in the French Enlightenment. After holding a postdoc and visiting assistant professorship at Illinois Institute of Technology, she recently began a position at Oakwood Secondary School in North Hollywood, CA.
While her professional training has largely been in the academic sector, she has interests in public history, journalism, photography, and educational methods more generally. As a teacher, she strives to use non-conventional teaching methods to show students the relevance of the past to their lives today. As a writer for Apartment Therapy and several interior design publications, Carolyn has had the opportunity to mix her historical knowledge with more contemporary information about the home, design, and mindful living.
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Oakwood Secondary School
History Instructor
Company NameOakwood Secondary School
Dates EmployedAug 2016 – Present Employment Duration1 yr 3 mos
LocationNorth Hollywood, California
Apartment Therapy
Contributing Writer
Company NameApartment Therapy
Dates EmployedNov 2011 – Present Employment Duration6 yrs
Illinois Institute of Technology
Benjamin Franklin Project Postdoctoral Fellow/ Visiting Assistant Professor of Social Sciences
Company NameIllinois Institute of Technology
Dates EmployedAug 2013 – Jun 2016 Employment Duration2 yrs 11 mos
Shore Magazine/ Northwest Indiana Times
Contributing Writer
Company NameShore Magazine/ Northwest Indiana Times
Dates EmployedMar 2013 – Jun 2016 Employment Duration3 yrs 4 mos
The University of Chicago
Von Holst Prize Lecturer
Company NameThe University of Chicago
Dates EmployedApr 2013 – Jun 2013 Employment Duration3 mos
"Sexual Politics in the French Enlightenment"
University of Chicago
Lecturer
Company NameUniversity of Chicago
Dates EmployedJan 2013 – Mar 2013 Employment Duration3 mos
"The Senses in Historical Context"
The University of Chicago
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Company NameThe University of Chicago
Dates EmployedJan 2013 – Mar 2013 Employment Duration3 mos
"European Civilizations I"
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"Self, Culture, and Society"
University of Chicago
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"European Civilization II"
University of Chicago
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"Europe, 1660-1815"
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Education
University of Chicago
University of Chicago
Degree Name Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.) Field Of Study History
Dates attended or expected graduation 2006 – 2013
University of Chicago
University of Chicago
Degree Name Master of Arts (M.A.) Field Of Study History
Dates attended or expected graduation 2006 – 2007
Pomona College
Pomona College
Degree Name Bachelor's degree Field Of Study History, English
Dates attended or expected graduation 2002 – 2006
Awards:
John H. Kemble Senior Thesis Award for History, 2006
David L. Edwards Memorial Scholarship for English Literature, 2004
National Society of Collegiate Scholars, 2003
Pomona College Scholar, 2003-2006
Robert C. Byrd Honors Scholarship, 2002-2006
University of Cambridge
University of Cambridge
Field Of Study English Language and Literature/Letters
Dates attended or expected graduation 2005 – 2005
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I'm a history instructor, freelance writer and photographer, interior design aficionada, and lover of all things quirky. My work has appeared regularly on Apartment Therapy. com and in several Chicago-area publications, and my photographs have appeared in Good Housekeeping. I have also worked at a library, an academic journal, and a tractor dealership. It was, ironically, the latter that most encouraged my love of books, since my free time afforded ample opportunity to read.
A country girl by birth but a city girl by heart, I moved to southern California for college. My education introduced me to James Joyce, Gerhard Richter, and the Marquis de Sade, and it was perhaps the subconscious influence of the latter that convinced me to spend the next seven years of my life as a graduate student. At the University of Chicago, where I earned my M.A. and Ph.D., I turned my attention to history, a field that I like to describe as “fiction with facts.” My academic specialties are France, history of sexuality, the eighteenth century, the history of science and medicine, and the history of the senses, but after spending several years in France for research, it might be more accurate to say that my specialties are pastries, cheese, and wine.
Purnell, Carolyn. The Sensational Past: How the
Enlightenment Changed the Way We Use Our
Senses
Mark Spencer
Library Journal.
142.1 (Jan. 1, 2017): p103.
COPYRIGHT 2017 Library Journals, LLC. A wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution
permitted.
http://www.libraryjournal.com/
Full Text:
Purnell, Carolyn. The Sensational Past: How the Enlightenment Changed the Way We Use Our Senses. Norton. Feb.
2017.304p. photos, notes, index. ISBN 9780393249378. $26.95; ebk. ISBN 9780393249361. PHIL
Historian Purnell aims to show how in the 18th and 19th centuries "people experienced their senses in daily life."
Given their understanding of "sensibility," she writes, they "trusted that every decision, sensation, purchase, touch,
sight, scent, taste, and experience had the power to transform the mind, body, and personality." This book ranges well
beyond the Enlightenment. Its chapters span the "pitch-black markets" of nighttime Paris; Valentin Haiiy's school for
the blind; Benjamin Franklin's pill that, by changing the scent of the "great Quantity ofWind" that was "produced in the
Bowels of human Creatures" might, says Purnell, "make flatulence the sweet-smelling life of the party"; Emanuel
Swedenborg's theory about the sixth sense, sex; a 16th-century piano made with live cats; and, William Buckland's
effort to eat "his way straight through the whole of animal creation" in Victorian Britain. VERDICT With its episodic
approach and a propensity for synthesis, this book is largely intended for general readers. It is also a highly
entertaining account that achieves the author's stated goal: "If-you learn a little or laugh a little, then I consider my job
to be done."--Mark Spencer, Brock Univ., St. Catharines, Ont.
Source Citation (MLA 8
th Edition)
Spencer, Mark. "Purnell, Carolyn. The Sensational Past: How the Enlightenment Changed the Way We Use Our
Senses." Library Journal, 1 Jan. 2017, p. 103+. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA476562379&it=r&asid=20c7be7bb74b7a54fb6ab90a7170a61f.
Accessed 1 Oct. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A476562379
10/1/2017 General OneFile - Saved Articles
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The Sensational Past: How the Enlightenment
Changed the Way We Use Our Senses
Publishers Weekly.
263.52 (Dec. 19, 2016): p117.
COPYRIGHT 2016 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
* The Sensational Past: How the Enlightenment Changed the Way We Use Our Senses
Carolyn Purnell. Norton, $26.95 (304p)
ISBN 978-0-393-24937-8
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
Purnell, visiting assistant professor of history at the Illinois Institute of Technology, thoroughly yet lightheartedly
explores the sensory theories of Europe's 18th-century intelligentsia and how these ideas influenced culture, lived
experience, and scientific endeavors of the time. Purnell finds an emblematic juxtaposition of concern and cruelty in
the ways in which Enlightenment philosophes analyzed the senses, noting such examples as the Marquis de Sade's
fascination with intense pain, the founding of the first schools for the blind, and the use of a "cat piano" to help relieve
depression. She also delves into the ways the physical senses could lead to increased social differences, as with
gastronomes advocating both a "love of food" and a "form of elitism." The use of color in clothing and furnishings
accentuated class distinction, and smells--as from perfumed soaps or their lack--could help reinforce social status.
Purnell shows that many modern attitudes were formed during the Enlightenment, including theories of "physical
perfectibility" and a much-theorized reliance on visual communication and metaphor. As Purnell enlightens readers on
the origin of the word "restaurant" or the medical reasons to "blow smoke up one's ass," she reveals the many subtle
ways we make sense of our world. (Feb.)
Source Citation (MLA 8
th Edition)
"The Sensational Past: How the Enlightenment Changed the Way We Use Our Senses." Publishers Weekly, 19 Dec.
2016, p. 117. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA475324340&it=r&asid=626915e0e5134ed1beaba199f2c7ebb0.
Accessed 1 Oct. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A475324340
10/1/2017 General OneFile - Saved Articles
http://go.galegroup.com/ps/marklist.do?actionCmd=GET_MARK_LIST&userGroupName=schlager&inPS=true&prodId=ITOF&ts=1506874878202 3/3
Purnell, Carolyn: THE SENSATIONAL PAST
Kirkus Reviews.
(Dec. 1, 2016):
COPYRIGHT 2016 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Full Text:
Purnell, Carolyn THE SENSATIONAL PAST Norton (Adult Nonfiction) $26.95 2, 7 ISBN: 978-0-393-24937-8
In her first book, Purnell gets our nerve endings tingling with an exploration of the interplay of mind and body as seen
through the lens of the Enlightenment.The author, a history instructor and "lover of bizarre facts," presents 10 episodic
chapters plumbing the effects of 18th-century ideas and technologies on human culture. Of particular interest are her
considerations of the philosophes, polyglots whose studies were not confined to formulating esoteric principles but
rather practical applications, girded by the Enlightenment's belief in human perfectibility. For Purnell's purposes, the
18th century is defined as the period from 1690 to 1830, a time when societies were fascinated with every aspect of the
senses, often ascribing to us more than the five basic ones recognized today. Purnell demonstrates how Enlightenment
thinkers, building on new theories of the brain and nervous system, began with the premise that all we have of
knowledge derives from the uses of our senses and then avidly pursued an understanding of their relationships to each
other. The author presents the senses as a complex weave, and her book, a fine companion to Diane Ackerman's A
Natural History of the Senses (1990), is by turns thoughtful, quirky, and richly--sometimes excessively--detailed. It can
be surprisingly moving, as in the chapter chronicling the rise of philanthropic societies, which created a dramatic shift
in the way the handicapped were viewed, reflecting the Enlightenment's impulse to engage all citizens in society.
Purnell effectively scrutinizes modern perceptions of the Enlightenment as a time wholly dominated by reason and the
scientific method. She also examines the dark side of the era's theories of physical perfectibility while reacquainting
readers with Enlightenment thinkers both famous and forgotten. If not all of her arguments are convincing, they remain
succinctly rendered: "The senses not only allowed access to pleasure, but they also lifted Nature's veil, allowing
humans to understand the deeper patterns of the world." A lively and edifying narrative with lessons for today.
Source Citation (MLA 8
th Edition)
"Purnell, Carolyn: THE SENSATIONAL PAST." Kirkus Reviews, 1 Dec. 2016. General OneFile,
go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA471901908&it=r&asid=cfdc5669629c8648a8192e8cdeaac12c.
Accessed 1 Oct. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A471901908
Carolyn Purnell - "The Sensational Past" - Irina Ruvinsky
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Monday, February 20, 2017
6:00 PM
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Carolyn Purnell discusses "The Sensational Past: How the Enlightenment Changed the Way We Use Our Senses." She will be joined in conversation by Irina Ruvinsky.
At the Co-op
About the book: In "The Sensational Past: How the Enlightenment Changed the Way We Use Our Senses," Carolyn Purnell dives deep into the fascinating, illuminating, and occasionally bizarre history of sensation in the eighteenth century, exploring both the complex theoretical developments of the Enlightenment philosophes and the surprising ways new developments in trade and technology altered the daily sensory experience of regular people. Along the way, we learn about grief and caffeine addiction, a seedy Parisian marketplace that operated entirely in the pitch-black of night, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s woefully unsuccessful stint as a tutor using a sense-based pedagogical technique.
One hundred forty-four years before Marcel Proust’s narrator famously bit into a madeleine, causing him to experience a rapturous overflow of taste-induced memories, nostalgic feelings, and intellectual reflections, the Genevan philosopher and naturalist Charles Bonnet declared, “There are no ideas except through the intervention of the senses.” While he may have unknowingly anticipated one of the great moments of 20th-century literature, Bonnet was not alone in his conviction regarding the singular power of sensation. A philosophe of the Enlightenment, Bonnet was among a grand milieu of thinkers, writers, and squabblers that formed the intellectual spine of 18th-century Europe. And Étienne Bonnot de Condillac, in a cleverly philosophic and distinctly French turn, imagined a senseless marble statue equipped with a human mind in an attempt to illustrate the primacy of sensation.
Indeed, the question of the senses was on everyone’s mind during the Enlightenment, as theorists from across Europe and burgeoning America debated such abstract notions as reason, knowledge, and fundamental rights. Senses, by contrast, were concrete: you could, quite literally, feel them. And yet, many Enlightenment theorists came to believe, these mediating forces were somehow inexorably linked to the lofty concepts that informed their intellectual mission.
About the author: Carolyn Purnell received her PhD from the University of Chicago. She is a history instructor, an interior design writer, and a lover of bizarre facts. This is her first book.
About the interlocutor: Irina Ruvinsky is a Professor of Philosophy and Literature at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She received her PhD in Philosophy from the University of Chicago and she studied French Literature at Sorbonne IV and at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris.
With coffee and cat pianos, how philosophers came to their senses
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In 1549, so the story goes, Philip II of Spain presented his father, the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, with a piano-like contraption filled with 20 cats, each with its tail tied to a key, so that every key would produce a unique howling sound.
This sounds like the stuff of legend, but the idea was a persistent one — a century later, a scholar wrote about an Italian prince who had a similar device, with sharp spikes for the tails instead of pulled strings. The cats' tortured cries were apparently so entertaining to the prince that they could lift him out of his melancholy moods.
Eighteenth-century philosophers weren't as appalled at the "cat piano" as you or I might be. In fact, one wrote, such a machine could be a valuable tool in treating the mentally disturbed, by forcing listeners lost in their thoughts to snap back to reality. The disturbing "music" could be almost like a primitive form of electroshock therapy, resetting the patient's nervous system to a healthy state.
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In this 1611 image by Johann Theodor de Bry, a troupe indulges in the delights of the cat piano. From The Sensational Past, by Carolyn Purnell.(
(University of Chicago Special Collections Research Center)
)
In this 1611 image by Johann Theodor de Bry, a troupe indulges in the delights of the cat piano. From The Sensational Past, by Carolyn Purnell.
(
(University of Chicago Special Collections Research Center)
)
That's one of the more extreme historical examples recounted in Carolyn Purnell's The Sensational Past: How the Enlightenment Changed the Way We Use Our Senses, but Purnell never shies away from the vivid or the visceral. Neither did the philosophers and scientists of the European Age of Enlightenment. It was commonly accepted that all human knowledge came from sensory experience; therefore, new experiences really did broaden your mind. While John Locke argued that the human mind was shaped both by experience and reflection, a French priest named Étienne Bonnot de Condillac took the idea even further, arguing that reflection, thought and memory were ultimately modified versions of our original sensations.
There was even discussion as to whether there were more senses beyond the usually cited sight, sound, taste, smell and touch. Some said balance was a separate sense, or sensitivity to changes in temperature. Others believed that sexual desire was a separate sense, a theory that fit with a rudimentary concept of our internal anatomy that proposed the body was made up not of cells, but interlocking fibers that would swell when aroused by pleasant sensations and shrink when confronted with painful ones.
The Sensational Past, by Carolyn Purnell
The Sensational Past, by Carolyn Purnell
Purnell assembles a wide array of historical evidence, concrete phenomena that show how theories about physical sensation played out in the real world. When she talks about the emergence of café culture, for example, she shows wealthy Parisians seeking out the exotic pleasures of coffee and hot cocoa as a marker of social status, but also describes how sophisticates of the time believed the actual experience of drinking a cup of coffee could be an exercise in self-improvement. It wasn't just that coffee made you more alert — as with listening to a cat piano, it could literally cancel out depressive moods by rewiring your body's sensory network.
It went beyond coffee, of course. "Consuming was a chance to actually re-create yourself," Purnell writes, "a means of designing and building yourself into the person that you wanted to be." Today, we buy into certain sensory experiences as a way of expressing our identity: I might try all sorts of international cuisines to prove I'm an open-minded foodie; you could be bungee jumping to demonstrate your adventurous spirit. For Enlightenment thinkers, such actions weren't merely a reflection of your present self, but a factor in who you could become. So it was important to choose your sensations wisely.
Carolyn Purnell, author of The Sensational Past. (
)
Carolyn Purnell, author of The Sensational Past.
(
)
Even Benjamin Franklin was into this sort of thinking. He famously circulated a document among his friends, suggesting that science should find a way to make farts smell better. Yes, he was joking about improving social relationships by making the odors more pleasant, but he was also serious about dealing with a world where smells flowed more freely than today, when we try to create "clean" environments for ourselves. (And small changes can make a big difference; just visit any bar before and after a ban on smoking goes into effect.)
Ultimately, Purnell believes the Enlightenment's embrace of the sensual world offers a compelling model for contemporary society, that the pursuit of pleasurable experience (in proper moderation) could go hand in hand with making the world a better place. The notion feels reductive in spots — her characterization of the era's treatment of the blind and otherwise impaired may strike some as charitable — but overall it's an intriguing glimpse at how seriously a group of nascent scientists in a revolutionary era took the world around them in all its manifestations.
Ron Hogan is the founding editor of Beatrice.com, one of the longest-running websites dedicated to books and writers.
The Sensational Past
How the Enlightenment Changed the Way We Use Our Senses
Carolyn Purnell
(W. W. Norton, $26.95)
Review: 'The Sensational Past' admirably ponders sensory environment
BY BILL THOMPSON Special to The Post and Courier Dec 25, 2016 (0)
The Sensational Past
THE SENSATIONAL PAST: How the Enlightenment Changed the Way We Use Our Senses. By Carolyn Purnell. Norton. 288 pages. $26.95.
In this richly detailed, often fascinating debut, Carolyn Purnell argues that our understanding of the senses can gain much from the mindsets of the Enlightenment, which held that there were far more permutations of the senses than the five we recognize today.
“By reorienting the way that we understand our processes of perception, we gain the power to learn something new about our lives today,” writes Purnell, a sensory historian who teaches at the Lewis College of Human Sciences in Chicago.
She maintains that for many Enlightenment thinkers, there was “no dichotomy between the mind's logical ideas and the body's gut feelings.” They all derived from the senses and, as such, they all had “a crucial place in understanding the world.” Georgians and Victorians possessed a far more expansive view of what constituted a “sensory experience.” No sensation was insignificant.
During the period 1690-1830, groups came together from every social strata, discipline and interest to engage in lively debate — often in that invigorating new venue, the cafe — wielding not only the intellectual standards of the age and a new grasp of brain science, but an appreciation for the sensory/emotional component in knowing, how the senses are utilized in daily life. This, and a conviction that managing the senses was vital not only to mental and physical health but social success.
In concluding how our “physical feelings and judgment work in tandem,” how emotions and rationality are joined in a perceptual minuet, Purnell states her case from a common sense as well as from a (non-polemical) feminist perspective. “The Enlightenment teaches us that each experience, moment, and feeling matters. ... We have to evaluate from multiple angles and experience the world in new ways in order to truly know ourselves. Our identities come from the things we think and do, but equally, they develop out of the things that we feel and experience.”
The author critiques modern notions of the Enlightenment as being entirely concerned with rational rigor, logic and the scientific method. She also gives voice to those who disagreed with many optimistic assumptions of Enlightenment thinkers, such as the English cleric Thomas Malthus, while holding the movement's darker aspects to scrutiny.
Purnell is at her best in analyzing how 18th-century ideas and technological developments affected human culture. From the intriguing philosopher the Marquis de Condorcet to the epicure Brillat-Savarin, she amplifies her points through the ideas and works of the philosophes, polymaths whose concepts did not limit themselves to abstract principles but also sought practical applications illuminated by the era's belief in human perfectibility.
She also reveals how changes in agricultural productivity and trade markets introduced new sensations as well as new consumer products and concepts, not least a definition of “sensibility” quite distinct from our own: sensory experience as an ongoing process of transformation.
Woven through these narratives are such interesting threads as the rise of philanthropic attitudes in the 18th century and the contributions to sensory science and history made by Purnell's modern colleagues, some of them quite remarkable.
Arguably the most lively and engaging book on the subject since Diane Ackerman's “A Natural History of the Senses” (1990), “The Sensational Past” provides not merely a chronological survey but a book brimming with provocative asides, from the sensory powers of sound and color and the ways in which personal hygiene became an indicator of class to how the sense of taste in a new age of gastronomy harbored (arbitrary) markers of cultural “good taste.”
Purnell also is an excellent excavator of facts curious and bizarre, but her goal is for readers to ponder the sensory environment we inhabit, and she succeeds in doing just that. If the book's speculations are not persuasive in every case, it is hard to dispute Purnell's broader conclusions or not be infected, delightfully, by her enthusiasms.
Reviewer Bill Thompson is a freelance writer and editor based in Charleston.
Contact Adam Parker at aparker@postandcourier.com or 843-937-5902.
A Sense of Enlightenment
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By: Michael Taube
June 21, 2017
In 1784 Immanuel Kant described the Age of Enlightenment as “man’s emergence from his self-incurred immaturity.” We often think about this age in terms of intellectual maturity: astonishing advances in philosophy, science, religion, and politics. The Enlightenment also, however, delved into obscure realms of the human condition. Among the more unusual were esoteric and occasionally bizarre innovations in the sensory realm.
Carolyn Purnell’s The Sensational Past: How the Enlightenment Changed the Way We Use Our Senses, is an intelligent, off-beat examination of the 18th century’s interest in sensory functions. In particular, the history instructor and self-described “lover of bizarre facts” set out to examine the different ways that people perceived, observed, and used sensory experiences in different aspects of their lives.
“The dominant Enlightenment epistemology,” according to Purnell, “was called ‘sensationalism,’ with other terms being sensationism, sensualism, or sensism.” Several European philosophers, including John Locke, Étienne Bonnot de Condillac and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, studied sensationalism in depth. Many of sensationalism’s followers believed that “humans acquire all knowledge through their senses...every human experience is mediated through the senses, and sensory experience is the main way we develop and exercise our mental faculties.”
This awakening of our senses led to some astonishing results, from sensible to senseless. For instance, Purnell wrote that if “Enlightenment philosophy was born out of a critical spirit, a love of ideas, and a fascination with self-creation, the café was its cradle.” Seventeenth-century France, where “there was no shortage of places where one could get a drink,” was the starting point in this trend. In 1647, regulations at drinking establishments like cabarets and taverns were established due to an increase in “violent behavior, gambling and prostitution.” But just as this was happening, “the king’s court was becoming increasingly infatuated with exotic liqueurs” as new international products “flooded the French market,” including caffeine and spices.
This led to the rise of the limonadiers, or “lemonaders.” People started flocking to these locations in search of flavored lemonades and drinks, candies, desserts, and liqueurs. Prices for these once-exotic items fell, making them affordable for a significant portion of society. “In a matter of decades,” Purnell notes, “the limonadiers became one of the richest guilds in France.”
There were also some mysterious concoctions being offered to the broader public. The citronella-based drink Water of Carmes, which supposedly “stimulated memory and got rid of unpleasant fantasies,” was popular for a time. Meanwhile, the Water of the Queen of Hungary was made of rosemary, a spice that some people firmly believed could prevent lethargy, sluggishness, and even paralysis.
A few relatively harmless drinks aside, the senses of the Enlightenment occasionally ventured into some strange territory. Take the brief rise of “prince poo.” During the time of Marie-Antoinette in France, wealthy individuals “spent the equivalent of thousands of dollars to wear the clothing the color of baby poop.” This grotesque fashion choice was done “as a way to show their support for the monarchy and to demonstrate how fashionable they could be.”
There was also the cat piano. As the story goes, King Philip II of Spain brought his father, Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, a ridiculous contraption in 1549 “with twenty rather narrow boxes, each of which contained a cat” that would produce a “lamentable meowing” when a key was pressed. Purnell acknowledges that “there is no evidence that a cat piano ever existed,” and could have been “a long-lasting trope or conceit.” Yet, this feline fascination somehow had “real effects on musical theory and the development of novel instruments” during the Enlightenment. This ranges from the macabre (pig piano, donkey chorus) to the genuine article (ocular harpsichord, perfume organ, liquor organ). As the author suggests, if “cats could harmonize, then so could colors, sounds, taste, smells, textures—just about anything a person could imagine.” Hence, the cat piano had both the “power and ability to amuse” as well as the ability to entice the imagination in song and sound.
As culinary tastes began to change, gastronomy was also transformed out during the Enlightenment. Food became a spectacle of colors rather than bland white and brown-looking dishes at every meal. French master chef Marie-Antoine Carême “dispensed with overpowering aromas, which had traditionally hidden the foul odors of improperly stored foods,” and favored “simple and subtle scents like orange, rose and lemon.” Culinary manuals and newspapers “were available at affordable prices” to middle class families, “and eating out was a much more common practice than it was fifty years earlier.”
Carême also started the practice of using pièces montées, or “large, sculptural centerpieces made out of edible substances like sugar and marzipan that weren’t actually intended for consumption,” to make a statement. He argued that “the principal branch of architecture is confectionary” and, as Purnell pointed out, this enabled the dinner table to become “the place to display some of the finest arts of humankind.”
The Sensational Past also provides ample evidence that some well-known and/or lesser known figures who lived during the Enlightenment, including the philosophes, followed the logic of sensationalism to many strange destinations. Benjamin Franklin argued that “the most useful contribution to science...would be a drug that would make flatulence the sweet-smelling life of the party.” The Marquis de Sade “pushed sensationalist philosophy to its extremes by creating dark, fictional worlds in which responses to pleasure and pain formed the core of all human action.” Jean-Bernard Mérian felt that “blindness should be seen as a social boon rather than an impairment” and actually hoped that doctors would “develop a special blindfold to ensure that the children’s sight would be completely checked.”
In short, Purnell’s exquisite study of the Enlightenment shows that this important age was “just as much a social and cultural movement as an intellectual one.”
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