Embodied : Victorian literature and the senses / William A. Cohen.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Cohen, William A.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

English literature--19th century--History and criticism.

English literature.

Senses and sensation in literature.

Self in literature.

Subjectivity in literature.

Mind and body in literature.

Human body in literature.

Human body (Philosophy).

Psychology and literature--History--19th century.

Psychology and literature.

History.

Physical Description:

xvi, 182 pages : illustrations ; 23 cm

Place of Publication:

Minneapolis : University of Minnesota Press, [2009]

Summary:

What does it mean to be human? British writers in the Victorian period found a surprising answer to this question. What is human, they discovered, is nothing more or less than the human body In literature of the period, as well as in scientific writing and journalism, the notion of an interior human essence came to be identified with the material existence of the body. The organs of sensory perception were understood as crucial routes of exchange between the interior and the external worlds.

William A. Cohen considers the meaning of sensory encounters in works by writers including Charles Dickens, Charlotte Bronte, Anthony Trollope, Thomas Hardy, and Gerard Manley Hopkins. Rather than regarding the bodily exterior as the primary location in which identity categories-such as gender, sexuality, race, and disability-are expressed, he focuses on the interior experience of sensation, whereby these politics come to be felt.

Contents:

Subject: embodiment and the senses

Self: material interiority in Dickens and Bronte

Skin: surface and sensation in Trollope's "The banks of the Jordan"

Senses: face and feeling in Hardy's The return of the native

Soul: inside Hopkins.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 137-173) and index.

ISBN:

9780816650125

0816650128

9780816650132

0816650136

OCLC:

229030917