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

Summary/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.

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