The Limits of the Human: Fictions of Anomaly, Race and Gender in the Long Eighteenth Century

ISBN-13: 9780521016421 / Angielski / Miękka / 2003 / 350 str.

Felicity Nussbaum

Opis

Felicity Nussbaum examines literary and cultural representations of human difference in England and its empire during the eighteenth century. Focusing especially on women's writing, Nussbaum analyzes it from the Restoration to abolition by considering a range of anomalies (defects, disease, and disability) as they intermingle with ideas of femininity, masculinity, and race to define "normalcy." Incorporating writings by Burney, Johnson, Sterne, Equiano and others, she covers a range of disabilities altered by emerging concepts of racial femininity and masculinity.

Recenzje

"The moral impetus and humane sensibility of The Limits of the Human are evident . . ." Studies in English Literature 1500-1900

Spis treści

List of illustrations; Acknowledgments; Introduction: monstrous tales; Part I. Anomaly and Gender: 1. Fictions of defect: Aphra Behn and Eliza Haywood; 2. Effeminacy and femininity: Sarah Fielding, Elizabeth Montagu, and Johnson; 3. Odd women, mangled men: the bluestockings and Sterne; 4. Scarred women: Frances Burney and smallpox; Part II. Race and Gender: 5. Racial femininity: 'Our British Fair'; 6. Black women: why Imoinda turns white; 7. Black men: Equiano, Sancho, and being a man; 8. Black parts: racial counterfeit on stage; Coda: between races.