The Language of the Heart presents a study of images less concerned with the tally of external figures of nature than with the construction of human physiology—and human nature itself. It is at once a work of rigorous historicist examination and a book of immense relevance to modern readers living in a new "cardiocentric" age.

The Language of the Heart, 1600-1750

Robert A. Erickson

1997 | 296 pages | Cloth $59.95
Literature
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Table of Contents

Preface
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Writing the Heart from Plato to Hobbes

1 The Biblical Heart
2 The Phallic Heart: William Harvey's The Motion of the Heart and "The Republick of Literature"
3 The Heart of Eve: Satan and Eve in Paradise Lost
4 The Generous Heart: Aphra Behn, Oroonoko, and the Woman Writer
5 The Written Heart: Clarissa, Lovelace, and Scripture

Notes
Works Cited
Index