O pożytkach z badania przyjemności. Rec.: Przyjemność w kulturze epoki rozumu. Red. T. Kostkiewiczowa Warszawa 2011
On the Aadvantages of Studying Pleasure. A review: Przyjemność w kulturze epoki rozumu. Red. T. Kostkiewiczowa Warszawa 2011

Summary/Abstract: The review discusses the book “Przyjemność w kulturze epoki rozumu (Pleasure in the Culture of the Age of Reason)” edited by Teresa Kostkiewiczowa. The volume’s contributors represent various disciplines of the humanities and in their articles they tackle the title issue from a variety of stances and from different perspectives, starting from general papers (e.g. on the definitions of the word “pleasure” in the lexicography of many 16th and 17th c. nations, and on the changes the word underwent) and ending with thorough case studies. The authors search for pleasure in the numerous fields of social life, such as education in theory and practice, politics – the “great,” international, present in the newspapers sent to the King Stanislaus Augustus Poniatowski from Paris, and the “small,” regional, shown on the example of the Gdańsk élites, private life as eating (cuisine philosophy and manners of feasting), conversations, fatherhood pleasures and pains, and bedroom pleasures. The volume also does not lack papers dealing with the vital in this period topics as art (treatises on the dramatic-theatrical theory, public shows, elegiacness, and 18th c. aesthetic thought), the nature (as a source of cognitive joy and as satisfaction with possessing a garden), the city (as a space of various pleasures, both good and meretricious), and lastly – travels. Ultimately, the papers exploit the issues gaining importance in the modern reflection over culture, i.e. strangeness and feminist matters. Richness of research interest and multiplication of points of view make the volume an exhaustive study of the pleasure, one of the key phenomenon of 18th c. thought.

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