Embodied

Embodied

Victorian Literature and the Senses

William A. Cohen
Table of Contents

$22.50 paper
ISBN: 978-0-8166-5013-2

$67.50 cloth
ISBN: 978-0-8166-5012-5

Making sense of the body in Victorian literature.

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 itself. 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.

Anatomizing Victorian ideas of the human, William A. Cohen considers the meaning of sensory encounters in works by writers including Charles Dickens, Charlotte Brontë, 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.

In these elegant engagements with literary works, cultural history, and critical theory, Cohen advances a phenomenological approach to embodiment, proposing that we encounter the world not through our minds or souls but through our senses.

“Cohen’s readings are both lucid and subtle and make a compelling case for the continuing interest both of the literature discussed and the theme of the body as a means of doing so.” —The Times Higher Education

William A. Cohen is professor of English at the University of Maryland. He is the author of Sex Scandal: The Private Parts of Victorian Fiction and coeditor of Filth: Dirt, Disgust, and Modern Life (Minnesota, 2005).

216 pages | 1 b&w photo | 6 x 9 | 2008

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Acknowledgments
Introduction

1. Subject: Embodiment and the Senses

2. Self: Material Interiority in Dickens and Brontë

3. Skin: Surface and Sensation in Trollope’s “The Banks of the Jordan”

4. Senses: Face and Feeling in Hardy’s The Return of the Native

5. Soul: Inside Hopkins

Conclusion

Notes
Index

[an error occurred while processing this directive]
[an error occurred while processing this directive]



Embodied *Victorian Literature and the Senses* William A. Cohen Table of Contents		$22.50 paper ISBN: 978-0-8166-5013-2 $67.50 cloth ISBN: 978-0-8166-5012-5
Making sense of the body in Victorian literature. 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 itself. 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. Anatomizing Victorian ideas of the human, William A. Cohen considers the meaning of sensory encounters in works by writers including Charles Dickens, Charlotte Brontë, 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. In these elegant engagements with literary works, cultural history, and critical theory, Cohen advances a phenomenological approach to embodiment, proposing that we encounter the world not through our minds or souls but through our senses. “Cohen’s readings are both lucid and subtle and make a compelling case for the continuing interest both of the literature discussed and the theme of the body as a means of doing so.” —The Times Higher Education William A. Cohen is professor of English at the University of Maryland. He is the author of Sex Scandal: The Private Parts of Victorian Fiction and coeditor of Filth: Dirt, Disgust, and Modern Life (Minnesota, 2005). 216 pages \| 1 b&w photo \| 6 x 9 \| 2008 TABLE OF CONTENTS Acknowledgments Introduction 1. Subject: Embodiment and the Senses 2. Self: Material Interiority in Dickens and Brontë 3. Skin: Surface and Sensation in Trollope’s “The Banks of the Jordan” 4. Senses: Face and Feeling in Hardy’s The Return of the Native 5. Soul: Inside Hopkins Conclusion Notes Index