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RESEARCH PRODUCT

Symptomatic bodies: reading and writing the odor of sanctity in French culture (1868-1901)

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description

Using examples from novels by the Goncourt brothers, Huysmans, Zola and Lemonnier, this paper explores the literary representation of the odor of sanctity in regard to the main epistemological discourses of the second half of the 19th century. In this deeply anticlerical intellectual context, the Christian myth of the odor of sanctity is analyzed by medical professionals and scientists as a pathological phenomenon. Although taking into account the divergent aesthetics of the selected authors, the study focuses mostly on the ambiguity literary texts maintain between the unspeakable experience of religious ecstasy and a symptomatic vision of the body.