Body, Mind and Spirits: The Physiology of Sexuality in the Culture of Sensibility

Current scholarship recognises both physiology and sexuality as central elements of the eighteenth‐century culture of sensibility. But scholars have yet really to explore the physiology of sexuality. Through an interdisciplinary approach this article demonstrates the profound resonance of late seventeenth‐century physiological discussions about nerves and animal spirits as the basis for understandings about sexuality and sensibility. Those discussions particularly emphasised specific ways that sex affected the sensible body and rational mind. The physiology of animal spirits – and associated ideas about the body and mind – would underpin representations of sexuality in the art and literature of sensibility in the mid‐eighteenth century.