Includes bibliographical references (p. 283-295) and index.

Enthusiasm : reason's masterpiece -- The artist and the woman -- Deviant spectators : ignorant girls and women who know too much -- Pygmalion's enthusiasm and the fires of nymphomania, or the psychology of art and desire -- The model Pygmalion and the artist Galatea -- Inspired by Heloise.

In eighteenth-century France, the ability to lose oneself in a character or scene marked both great artists and ideal spectators. Yet it was thought this same passionate enthusiasm, if taken to unreasonable extremes, could also lead to sexual deviance, mental illness--even death. Women and artists were seen as especially susceptible to these negative consequences of creative enthusiasm, and women artists, doubly so. Mary D. Sheriff uses these very different visions of enthusiasm to explore the complex interrelationships among creativity, sexuality, the body and the mind in eighteenth-century Fra.

Description based on print version record.