Meeting the “other” body: physical encountersrs in eighteenth-century women’s travel books

Autori

  • Lia Guerra Università degli Studi di Pavia

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.13130/2282-0035/9356

Abstract

This paper addresses eighteenth-century women’s travel writing outside Europe from the perspective of their representation of the (foreign) body. The assumption is that while gazing at the others’ bodies, women were forcing themselves into a perception of their own bodies as clearly distinct from or as cognate to the foreign ones. The examples provided aim at showing how the representation of other bodies calls for an acknowledgment of domestic cultural issues, whether the debate is on ethical problems like slavery or over the social status of women, or simply over codified cultural symbols. Behn, Justice, Montagu, Vigor, Kindersley, Schaw, Craven, Falconbridge, Parker, Fay constitute the corpus of authors considered, all of them recording travels to far away unusual destinations.

Biografia autore

Lia Guerra, Università degli Studi di Pavia

Lia Guerra is full professor of English Literature at the Department of Humanities (University of Pavia). Her main research interests focus on 18th century literature, travel literature of the 18th and 19th centuries, Mary Shelley, Modernism and more specifically James Joyce’s early writings. She has published volumes on First World War Poetry, James Joyce and Mary Shelley.

Lia Guerra è professore ordinario di Letteratura inglese nel Dipartimento di Studi umanistici dell’Università degli Studi di Pavia. I suoi principali interessi di ricerca vertono sulla letteratura del XVIII secolo, sulla letteratura di viaggio del XVIII e XIX secolo, su Mary Shelley, il modernismo e più specificatamente i primi scritti di James Joyce. Ha pubblicato volumi sulla poesia della Prima guerra mondiale, James Joyce e Mary Shelley

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Pubblicato

2017-12-20

Fascicolo

Sezione

Representing the Body in Eighteenth-Century Literature and Culture