WRITTEN ON THE BODY: ‘SOMATIC ELOQUENCE’ AND THE (DE)CONSTRUCTION OF GENDER IN ELIZA HAYWOOD’S “LOVE IN EXCESS”

Caterina M. GRASL

doi:10.24193/subbphilo.2017.3.16

Authors

Caterina M. GRASL University of Vienna, Austria. Contact address: <caterina.grasl@univie.ac.at> https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6498-2478

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.24193/subbphilo.2017.3.16

Keywords:

Eliza Haywood; Love in Excess, body language, emotion, gender, cognitive poetics, sensibility .

Abstract

Written on the Body: ‘Somatic Eloquence’ and the (De)Construction of Gender in Eliza Haywood’s Love in Excess. This paper aims to position Haywood’s first novel in relation to its socio-cultural background and its place in the history of emotions. Haywood’s writing is characteristic of the eighteenth-century fascination with emotional expression through bodily signs. Insisting on the impossibility of encoding emotion in language, Haywood focuses on its somatic manifestations, forcing readers to fill the gaps from their own emotional experience. Implementing cognitive approaches to literature and cultural studies, my paper analyses the textual mechanisms that encourage reader involvement and engender sympathy, and shows how, in turn, these strategies elicit bodily displays of feeling in the audience and serve to interrogate and (de)construct established and emerging gender boundaries.

REZUMAT. Scris pe trup: ‘elocvența somatică’ și (de)construirea genului în Love in Excess de Eliza Haywood. Lucrarea de față își propune să poziționeze primul roman de Haywood în raport cu contextul socio-cultural și cu locul pe care îl ocupă în istoria trăirilor interioare. Scriitura Elizei Haywood este reprezentativă pentru fascinația pe care secolul optsprezece o manifestă pentru exprimarea trăirilor interioare prin semne corporale. Insistând pe imposibilitatea codificării emoțiilor în limbaj, Haywood se concentrează pe manifestările somatice ale acestora, obligându-și cititorii să compenseze lacunele cu propria lor experiență emoțională. Prin implementarea abordărilor cognitive în literatură și studii culturale, lucrarea mea analizează mecanismele textuale care încurajează implicarea cititorului și insuflă empatie, demonstrând, în același timp, cum, la rândul lor, aceste strategii stârnesc manifestări corporale ale emoțiilor în rândul cititorilor și servesc la interogarea și (de)construirea diferențelor de gen prestabilite și emergente.

Cuvinte cheie: Eliza Haywood; Love in Excess, limbajul trupului, emoție, gen, poetică cognitivă, sensibilitate

Author Biography

Caterina M. GRASL, University of Vienna, Austria. Contact address: <caterina.grasl@univie.ac.at>

Caterina M. Grasl (née Novák) is Assistant Professor at the Department of English and American Studies at the University of Vienna, Austria. She has recently completed a doctoral thesis which employs cognitive methodology to explore changing images of the Victorians in early- and mid-twentieth-century fiction. Current research interests include early women writers, neo-Victorianism, adaptation studies, and cognitive approaches to literature and culture. Contact address: <caterina.grasl@univie.ac.at>.

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