ABSTRACT
Materialism—the idea that only matter exists—proved to be a significant, if often controversial, philosophical movement throughout the eighteenth century. Recently, scholars of eighteenth-century literature, inspired in part by a broader “non-human turn,” have begun to emphasize the importance of materialism in the period’s poems, novels, and satires. In this work, materialism appears as a profoundly ambivalent force, one that could subvert political tyranny or cast doubt on our capacity for meaningful human agency.
