Prosthetic Body Parts in Nineteenth-Century Literature and Culture

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.

This book is open access, which means that you have free and unlimited access Provides a reappraisal of historical attitudes to prostheses and concepts of physical 'normality' and 'difference' Considers attitudes to different types of prostheses to reapproach to the historiography of bodily technologies Reveals how representations of the prostheticized body were inflected by factors such as social class, gender and age

Autorentext

Ryan Sweet is a Lecturer in Humanities and the Director of the Humanities Foundation Year at Swansea University, UK.

Inhalt

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.