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  • © 2004

Reading the Body in the Eighteenth-Century Novel

Palgrave Macmillan

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Table of contents (8 chapters)

  1. Front Matter

    Pages i-xviii
  2. The Body Inside the Skin: the Medical Model

    • Juliet McMaster
    Pages 1-24
  3. The Body Illegible: Tristram Shandy

    • Juliet McMaster
    Pages 25-41
  4. Physiognomy: The Index of the Mind

    • Juliet McMaster
    Pages 42-68
  5. Reading and Re-Encoding the Body: Clarissa

    • Juliet McMaster
    Pages 102-120
  6. Gesture: Suiting the Action to the Word

    • Juliet McMaster
    Pages 121-147
  7. Body Language Censored: Camilla

    • Juliet McMaster
    Pages 148-165
  8. Epilogue: And On To Jane Austen

    • Juliet McMaster
    Pages 166-174
  9. Back Matter

    Pages 175-194

About this book

McMaster's lively study looks at the various codes by which Eighteenth-century novelists made the minds of their characters legible through their bodies. She tellingly explores the discourses of medicine, physiognomy, gesture and facial expression, completely familiar to contemporary readers but not to us, in ways that enrich our reading of such classics as Clarissa and Tristram Shandy , as well as of novels by Fanny Burney, Mary Wollstonecraft and Jane Austen.

Reviews

'Offering insight into the ways in which eighteenth-century novelists expected their readers to draw on common understandings about expression, gesture and character, this is a lively and useful study.' - Times Literary Supplement

'McMaster productively alerts us to the rich languages of the body in the eighteenth century by both parsing out their antecedents and illuminating the prevalence of expressive bodies in the novelistic tradition.' - Tita Chico, Eighteenth-Century Studies

About the author

JULIET McMASTER is University Professor Emeritus at the University of Alberta, Canada. She is the author of Thackeray: The Major Novels, Jane Austen on Love and Jane Austen the Novelist, Trollope's Palliser Novels and Dickens the Designer, co-author of The Novel from Sterne to James, and co-editor of The Cambridge Companion to Jane Austen.

Bibliographic Information

Buy it now

Buying options

eBook USD 39.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book USD 54.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info
Hardcover Book USD 54.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Other ways to access