The body in Swift and Defoe / Carol Houlihan Flynn.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Flynn, Carol Houlihan, 1945- author.

Series:

Cambridge studies in eighteenth-century English literature and thought ; 5.

Cambridge studies in eighteenth-century English literature and thought ; 5

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Swift, Jonathan, 1667-1745--Knowledge--Anatomy.

Swift, Jonathan.

Defoe, Daniel, 1661?-1731--Knowledge--Anatomy.

Defoe, Daniel.

English literature--18th century--History and criticism.

English literature.

Human body in literature.

Sex in literature.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (vii, 231 pages) : digital, PDF file(s).

Edition:

First edition.

Other Title:

The Body in Swift & Defoe

Place of Publication:

Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 1990.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

This original book takes a new look at problems surrounding the physical, material nature of the human body, in particular as represented in the works of Jonathan Swift and Daniel Defoe. It examines the role that literary invention (with its rhetorical and linguistic strategies) plays in expressing and exploring the problems of physicality, and deals with issues such as sexuality, cannibalism, scatology and the fear of contagion. Swift and Defoe are seen as writers confronting the essentially modern problem of what it is to be human in a rapidly developing consumer economy, where individual bodies, beset by poverty and disease, are felt to be threatened by the enveloping masses of urban crowds. In an eclectic synthesis of recent approaches, Carol Flynn works into her study the insights provided by biographical and psychoanalytic criticism, Marxism and social history, studies of eighteenth-century philosophy, and feminist readings. Her challenging approach reviews the cost of being human, the 'expense' of material as opposed to spiritual life in eighteenth-century society, as it is revealed in its literature.

Contents:

1. Dull organs : the matter of the body in the plague year

2. The burthen in the belly

3. Consuming desires : Defoe's sexual systems

4. Flesh and blood : Swift's sexual strategies

5. The ladies : d-ned, insolent, proud, unmannerly sluts

6. Chains of consumption : the bodies of the poor

7. Consumptive fictions : cannibalism in Defoe and Swift

8. Vital parts : Swift's necessary metaphors.

Notes:

Title from publisher's bibliographic system (viewed on 05 Oct 2015).

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9780511831645

0511831641

9781139085878

1139085875

9780511553462

0511553463

Publisher Number:

2027/heb07692 hdl