Death and the Body in the Eighteenth-Century Novel
()
About this ebook
Death and the Body in the Eighteenth-Century Novel demonstrates that archives continually speak to the period’s rising funeral and mourning culture, as well as the increasing commodification of death and mourning typically associated with nineteenth-century practices. Drawing on a variety of historical discourses—such as wills, undertaking histories, medical treatises and textbooks, anatomical studies, philosophical treatises, and religious tracts and sermons—the book contributes to a fuller understanding of the history of death in the Enlightenment and its narrative transformation.
Death and the Body in the Eighteenth-Century Novel not only offers new insights about the effect of a growing secularization and commodification of death on the culture and its productions, but also fills critical gaps in the history of death, using narrative as a distinct literary marker. As anatomists dissected, undertakers preserved, jewelers encased, and artists figured the corpse, so too the novelist portrayed bodily artifacts. Why are these morbid forms of materiality entombed in the novel? Jolene Zigarovich addresses this complex question by claiming that the body itself—its parts, or its preserved representation—functioned as secular memento, suggesting that preserved remains became symbols of individuality and subjectivity. To support the conception that in this period notions of self and knowing center upon theories of the tactile and material, the chapters are organized around sensory conceptions and bodily materials such as touch, preserved flesh, bowel, heart, wax, hair, and bone. Including numerous visual examples, the book also argues that the relic represents the slippage between corpse and treasure, sentimentality and materialism, and corporeal fetish and aesthetic accessory.
Zigarovich’s analysis compels us to reassess the eighteenth-century response to and representation of the dead and dead-like body, and its material purpose and use in fiction. In a broader framework, Death and the Body in the Eighteenth-Century Novel also narrates a history of the novel that speaks to the cultural formation of modern individualism.
Jolene Zigarovich
Jolene Zigarovich is Associate Professor of English at the University of Northern Iowa.
Related to Death and the Body in the Eighteenth-Century Novel
Related ebooks
Romantic Automata: Exhibitions, Figures, Organisms Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Children Of Drancy Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Ghost behind the Masks: The Victorian Poets and Shakespeare Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSlavery and the Romantic Imagination Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Age of Nightmare: The Gothic and British Culture, 1750–1900 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsDracula Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBleak Houses: Marital Violence in Victorian Fiction Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5Midnight in Westminster Abbey Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Ballad of the White Horse Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsWomen and the Gallows, 1797–1837: Unfortunate Wretches Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Study Guide ... The Waste Land: notes Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsNarrative Mourning: Death and Its Relics in the Eighteenth-Century British Novel Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Lost Second Book of Aristotle's Poetics Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsEscape from Hell Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Rome: Republic into Empire: The Civil Wars of the First Century BCE Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsRest in Pieces: The Curious Fates of Famous Corpses Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Age of Reason Begins: The Story of Civilization, Volume VII Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5LÃ -bas (Down There) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBritish literature and archaeology, 1880–1930 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Wife of Bath: A Biography Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Bram Stoker Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsGhost Stories: Classic Tales of Horror and Suspense Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Languages of Psyche: Mind and Body in Enlightenment Thought Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsTudor Autobiography: Listening for Inwardness Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Dark Thread: From Tragical Histories to Gothic Tales Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Roundabout Manner: Sketches of Life Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Living Stone: Stories of Uncanny Sculpture, 1858-1948 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsImages of Authority: Papers Presented to Joyce Reynolds on the Occasion of her 70th Birthday Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Daughter's Love: Thomas More & His Dearest Meg Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 9 Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5
Literary Criticism For You
Killers of the Flower Moon: by David Grann | Conversation Starters Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The 48 Laws of Power: by Robert Greene | Conversation Starters Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/512 Rules For Life: by Jordan Peterson | Conversation Starters Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Reader’s Companion to J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5As I Lay Dying Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Court of Thorns and Roses: A Novel by Sarah J. Maas | Conversation Starters Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Man's Search for Meaning: by Viktor E. Frankl | Conversation Starters Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Untethered Soul: The Journey Beyond Yourself by Michael A. Singer | Conversation Starters Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Book of Virtues Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Oscar Wilde: The Unrepentant Years Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Between the World and Me: by Ta-Nehisi Coates | Conversation Starters Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5The Gulag Archipelago [Volume 1]: An Experiment in Literary Investigation Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Circe: by Madeline Miller | Conversation Starters Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Art of Seduction: by Robert Greene | Conversation Starters Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Great Alone: by Kristin Hannah | Conversation Starters Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5SUMMARY Of The Plant Paradox: The Hidden Dangers in Healthy Foods That Cause Disease and Weight Gain Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Letters to a Young Poet Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Speed Reading: How to Read a Book a Day - Simple Tricks to Explode Your Reading Speed and Comprehension Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking by Susan Cain | Conversation Starters Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5The Power of Habit: by Charles Duhigg | Conversation Starters Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5One Hundred Years of Solitude: A Novel by Gabriel Garcia Márquez | Conversation Starters Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Western Canon: The Books and School of the Ages Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Reviews for Death and the Body in the Eighteenth-Century Novel
0 ratings0 reviews