Tony Halliday,The Temperamental Nude: Class, Medicine and Representation in Eighteenth-Century France

Abstract

There are some books that are much more enjoyable to read than review. Tony Halliday's The Temperamental Nude is one of these. This is a demanding, consistently interesting and often original compilation of scholarly reflections. As a work of literature it is lucid and often witty. At no point does the text leave the reader questioning the depth of the author's knowledge of French eighteenth-century culture, the soundness of his judgement or his analytical rigour. For the purposes of review, however, it is necessary to judge a book upon whether it addresses the thesis that is set out in its introduction or, at the very least, answers the expectation of its title. It is on this level that The Temperamental Nude is not cogent. The strength of the text is in its parts and a sympathetic reader is obliged to read page by page for abstruse insights and forget any expectation of an overall case. That this is necessary is probably owing to the circumstances of the book's publication, for the author died before it could be completed and a generous editor (Richard Wrigley) pieced it together for publication. Any critical review of the book must, because of the organisational problems which remain, take these circumstances into account. It is necessary, then, for a reviewer to guess at which of the problems of cogency are explained by the book's assemblage and which are owing to a fundamental irresolution with regards to authorial conception. The editor was sufficiently skilful to render it very difficult to make these distinctions.