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Bodily Pain in Romantic Literature PDF

243 Pages·2014·4.176 MB·English
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Bodily Pain in Romantic Literature When writers of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries explored the implications of organic and emotional sensitivity, the pain of the body gave rise to unsettling but irresistible questions. Urged on by some of their most deeply felt preoccupations—and in the case of fi gures like Coleridge and P. B. Shelley, by their own experiences of chronic pain—many writers found themselves drawn to the imaginative scrutiny of bodies in extremis. Bodily Pain in Romantic Literature reveals the signifi cance of physical hurt for the poetry, philosophy, and medicine of the Romantic period. This study looks back to eighteenth-century medical controversies that made pain central to discussions about the nature of life, and forward to the birth of surgical anaesthesia in 1846. It examines why Jeremy Bentham wrote in defence of torture, and how pain sparked the imagination of think- ers from Adam Smith to the Marquis de Sade. Jeremy Davies brings to bear on Romantic studies the fascinating recent work in the medical humanities that off ers a fresh understanding of bodily hurt, and shows how pain could prompt new ways of thinking about politics, ethics, and identity. Jeremy Davies is a lecturer at the University of Leeds, UK. Routledge Studies in Romanticism 1 Keats’s Boyish Imagination 9 Thomas De Quincey Richard Marggraf Turley New Theoretical and Critical Directions 2 Leigh Hunt Edited by Robert Morrison Life, Poetics, Politics and Daniel S. Roberts Edited by Nicholas Roe 10 Romanticism and Visuality 3 Leigh Hunt and the London Fragments, History, Spectacle Literary Scene Sophie Thomas A Reception History of his Major Works, 1805–1828 11 Romanticism, History, Michael Eberle-Sinatra Historicism Essays on an Orthodoxy 4 Tracing Women’s Romanticism Edited by Damian Walford Davies Gender, History and Transcendence 12 The Meaning of “Life” in Kari E. Lokke Romantic Poetry and Poetics Edited by Ross Wilson 5 Metaphysical Hazlitt Bicentenary Essays 13 German Romanticism and Uttara Natarajan, Tom Paulin Science and Duncan Wu The Procreative Poetics of Goethe, Novalis, and Ritter 6 Romantic Genius and the Jocelyn Holland Literary Magazine Biography, Celebrity, Politics 14 Colonialism, Race, and the David Higgins French Romantic Imagination Pratima Prasad 7 Romantic Representations of British India 15 Keats and Philosophy Edited by Michael J. Franklin The Life of Sensations Shahidha K. Bari 8 Sympathy and the State in the Romantic Era 16 Animality in British Systems, State Finance, and the Romanticism Shadows of Futurity The Aesthetics of Species Robert Mitchell Peter Heymans 17 Legacies of Romanticism Literature, Culture, Aesthetics Edited by Carmen Casaliggi and Paul March-Russell 18 The Female Romantics Nineteenth-century Women Novelists and Byronism Caroline Franklin 19 Bodily Pain in Romantic Literature Jeremy Davies This page intentionally left blank Bodily Pain in Romantic Literature Jeremy Davies NEW YORK LONDON First published 2014 by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 and by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2014 Taylor & Francis The right of Jeremy Davies to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark Notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Davies, Jeremy. Bodily Pain in Romantic Literature / Jeremy Davies. pages cm. — (Routledge Studies in Romanticism 19) Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Pain in literature. 2. English literature—18th century—History and criticism. 3. Romanticism—Great Britain. 4. Literature and medicine—Great Britain—History—18th century. 5. Human body in literature. I. Title. PR448.P25D38 2014 809'.93353—dc23 2013035115 ISBN13: 978-0-415-84291-4 (hbk) ISBN13: 978-0-203-75830-4 (ebk) Typeset in Sabon by IBT Global. O Zeus, what land have I come to? —Sophocles, The Women of Trachis This page intentionally left blank Contents Preface xi 1 Romanticism and the Sense of Pain 1 2 Bentham’s Absolute 37 3 Sade’s Unreason 67 4 Living Thorns: Coleridge and Hartley 97 5 Shelley: A Sense of Senselessness 130 6 Conclusion 164 Notes 171 References 205 Index 223

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