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Author Sweet, Ryan, author

Title Prosthetic body parts in nineteenth-century literature and culture / Ryan Sweet
Published Cham, Switzerland : Palgrave Macmillan, [2022]

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Description 1 online resource (1 volume) : illustrations (black and white)
Series Palgrave studies in nineteenth-century writing and culture
Palgrave studies in nineteenth-century writing and culture.
Contents 1. Introduction -- 2. Constructing and Complicating Physical Wholeness -- 3. The infurnal thing : Autonomy and Ability in Narratives of Disabling, Self-Acting, and Weaponised Prostheses -- 4. Mobilities: Physical and Social -- 5. Losing a Leg to Gain a Wife : Marriage, Gender, and the Prosthetic Body Part -- 6. Signs of Decline? Prostheses and the Ageing Subject -- 7. Conclusion
Summary This open access book investigates imaginaries of artificial limbs, eyes, hair, and teeth in British and American literary and cultural sources from the nineteenth and early twentieth century. Prosthetic Body Parts in Nineteenth-Century Literature and Culture shows how depictions of prostheses complicated the contemporary bodily status quo, which increasingly demanded an appearance of physical wholeness. Revealing how representations of the prostheticized body were inflected significantly by factors such as social class, gender, and age, Prosthetic Body Parts in Nineteenth-Century Literature and Culture argues that nineteenth-century prosthesis narratives, though presented in a predominantly ableist and sometimes disablist manner, challenged the dominance of physical completeness as they questioned the logic of prostheticization or presented non-normative subjects in threateningly powerful ways. Considering texts by authors including Charles Dickens, Edgar Allan Poe, and Arthur Conan Doyle alongside various cultural, medical, and commercial materials, this book provides an important reappraisal of historical attitudes to not only prostheses but also concepts of physical normalcy and difference
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references and index
Notes Print version record
Subject American literature -- 19th century -- History and criticism
English literature -- 19th century -- History and criticism
Human body in literature.
Prosthesis in literature.
Prosthesis -- History -- 19th century
Prosthesis in literature
American literature
English literature
Human body in literature
Prosthesis
Genre/Form Criticism, interpretation, etc.
History
Form Electronic book
ISBN 9783030785895
3030785890