Bodies and Things in Nineteenth-Century Literature and Culture

In the nineteenth century, the relationship between the human body and the object world was redefined by momentous social, cultural, and scientific changes. This book traces the emergence of an exciting range of ideas about materiality, phenomenological experience, and the realm of objects in nineteenth-century literature and culture. The book features contributions by leading specialists in the field as well as the work of younger colleagues.

The collection sheds new light on the porous boundaries, affinities, and frictions between bodies and things in the nineteenth-century imagination by drawing on the insights of gender studies, postcolonial studies, the history of science, and performance studies. The contributors explore canonical nineteenth-century works by Jane Austen, Charlotte Bronte, Charles Dickens, and Henry James, alongside less-familiar texts, such as travelogues, cartoons and scientific treatises, and a wide range of objects including nineteenth-century automata, scrapbooks, museum exhibits and antiques.

KATHARINA BOEHM is an assistant professor in English Literature at the University of Regensburg, Germany.