Disgust is a strong, immediate visceral reaction. While it may feel like a purely instinctive response, the cultural meanings ascribed to particular objects, bodies or behaviours play a significant role in determining whether or not they are experienced as disgusting. This interplay between bodies and ideas makes disgust a powerful source of metaphor in narrative fiction. For women s writing, disgust is particularly problematic due to a misogynistic tradition in which the female body has often been coded as disgusting.
This book offers a comparative study of recently published texts by...