Novel Bodies - Disability and Sexuality in Eighteenth-Century British Literature

Novel Bodies examines the significant role that disability plays in shaping the British literary history of sexuality. Farr shows that various eighteenth-century novelists represent disability and sexuality in flexible ways to reconfigure the political and social landscapes of eighteenth-century Britain. In imagining the lived experience of disability as analogous to—and as informed by—queer genders and sexualities, the authors featured reveal emerging ideas of able-bodiedness and heterosexuality as interconnected systems that sustain dominant models of courtship, reproduction, and degeneracy.
 

List of contents

List of Illustrations

Introduction: Disability and the Literary History of Sexuality

1 Deaf Education and Queerness in the Duncan Campbell Compendium (1720-1732)

2 The Reforming Bodies of Samuel Richardson's Pamela (1740) and Sarah Scott's Fiction (1754-66)

3 Chronic Illness, Medicine, and the Healthy Marriages of Tobias Smollett's The Expedition of Humphry Clinker (1771)

4 Gendered Disfigurement and Queer Ocular Relations in Frances Burney's Camilla (1796) and Maria Edgeworth's Belinda (1801)

Coda: Hypochondria and the Implausibility of Heterosexual Romance in Jane Austen's Sanditon (1817)

Acknowledgments

Bibliography

Index

About the author

JASON S. FARR is an assistant professor of English at Marquette University in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. 

Summary

Examines the significant role that disability plays in shaping the British literary history of sexuality. Jason Farr shows that various eighteenth-century novelists represent disability and sexuality in flexible ways to reconfigure the political and social landscapes of eighteenth-century Britain.

Product details

Authors	Jason S Farr, Jason S. Farr
Publisher	Rutgers University Press
Languages	English
Product format	Paperback / Softback
Released	30.06.2019
EAN	9781684481071
ISBN	978-1-68448-107-1
No. of pages	206
Series	Transits: Literature, Thought; Transits: Literature, Thought & Culture, 1650-1850; Transits: Literature, Thought
Subject	Humanities, art, music > Linguistics and literary studies > English linguistics / literary studies

Product details

• Authors: Jason S Farr, Jason S. Farr
• Publisher: Rutgers University Press
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 30.06.2019
• EAN: 9781684481071
• ISBN: 978-1-68448-107-1
• No. of pages: 206
• Series: Transits: Literature, Thought; Transits: Literature, Thought & Culture, 1650-1850; Transits: Literature, Thought
• Subject: Humanities, art, music > Linguistics and literary studies > English linguistics / literary studies