Subject Area
Health Sciences, Humanities, Language and Literature, English and American, Law, Life Sciences, Philosophy, Physical Sciences
Abstract
Quixotes, Quacks, and Laughing Philosophers: Humor and Intellectual Authority in the Long Eighteenth Century recovers the fascinating and forgotten story of John Elliot (1747–1787), a novelist, physician, mad scientist, pioneering optical theorist, criminal lunatic, and Gothic antihero whose life and work illuminate a strange new history of science, medicine, law, and literature in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
Degree Date
Spring 5-17-2025
Document Type
Dissertation
Degree Name
Ph.D.
Department
English
Advisor
Tim Cassedy
Second Advisor
Beth Newman
Third Advisor
Rajani Sudan
Fourth Advisor
Andy Amato
Number of Pages
282
Format
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 4.0 License
Recommended Citation
Fanning, Macklin, "Quixotes, Quacks, and Laughing Philosophers: Humor and Intellectual Authority in the Long Eighteenth Century" (2025). English Theses and Dissertations. 21.
https://scholar.smu.edu/hum_sci_english_etds/21
