The Matter of Mind: Reason and Experience in the Age of Descartes

‘All of them [readers] will most likely be impressed with the intellectual range and critical acumen displayed by Braider throughout this highly stimulating study.’ Edward Ousselin, French Studies, vol 66:04:2012

‘This book is a thought provoking contribution to early modern French studies.’

Paul Scott, French Review vol 88:02:2014

‘A major contribution to state-of-the-art research, The Matter of Mind will immediately become essential reading among specialists of French early modern literature and an important book for all those interested in early modern history, cognitive and aesthetic philosophy, and art history. Christopher Braider ambitiously covers a wide range of seventeenth-century French authors and texts, masterfully contextualizing them within the larger European landscape and exhibiting an admirable command of contemporary scholarship across a broad range of fields. Deeply engaging, forcefully argued, and insightful in its investigations, The Matter of Mind is certain to create lively responses and a salutary debate. I look forward to assigning it to my students and discussing it among colleagues.’

Larry Norman, Department of Romance Languages and Literatures, University of Chicago, and author of 'The Shock of the Ancient: Literature and History in Early Modern France'

‘The Matter of Mind is an imposing, extremely well-researched intellectual project that aims to redirect critical attention away from the Cartesian "mind-body" split as the proscriptive norm of the Classical Age, a period whose heterogeneity belies precisely any such clear-cut impositions. Christopher Braider brings to this endeavour an impressive and compelling mastery of the critical traditions of a variety of authors and artists, offering carefully constructed, erudite readings of their texts and paintings. For once, we have a scholar of seventeenth-century thought whose knowledge and critical acumen is capable of switching mimetic registers and applying, in ways very few other scholars are capable of doing, this acumen to the field of art history.’

Mitchell Greenberg, Department of Romance Studies, Cornell University