Embodied ─ Victorian Literature and the Senses

Cohen (English, University of Maryland) uses the theory of embodiment to investigate the works of noted Victorian authors, particularly Dickens, Hardy, Trollope, Bronte and Hopkins. Each emphasizes one of the senses and how they provide a permeability to the bodies of the characters, making and unmaking them. This entails a blurring of the interior self and the materiality of the body and other objects. It also changes the subjective self, making it mutable through sensory input. The treatment of the body as a thing, as Bronte's vision of a man as a cliff to be scaled, or a thing as a body, as Hardy's moor perceived as a face further demonstrates the ways in which these authors brought the body into the forefront of experience. Annotation c2009 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)