In eighteenth-century Spain, just as in Britain and France, the term "Enlightenment" implied both a spirit of criticism and the dissemination of new scientific and philosophical modes of thought. But in Spain this new way of thinking also required the incorporation of ancient epistemologies, in particular, practices and ideas concerning the healing, training, and experience of the body.

In Embodying Enlightenment, Rebecca Haidt investigates this distinctly Spanish fascination with the cultural construction of bodies during the Enlightenment, particularly masculine bodies. Haidt interlaces a host of disciplines in her analysis of key works of eighteenth-century literature and art, including medical treatises, visual imagery, poetry, and erotica. She then traces the classical knowledge that informed the literature of the gendered, medicalized, and politicized male body in eighteenth-century Spanish culture.

What results is an original and revealing study of the body in Spanish culture and thought, and a look at the Spanish Enlightenment from a unique angle.