Description
Book SynopsisThrough a series of careful, historicized readings of works by a range of authors, this book relates both the what and the how of representation to specific theories of embodiment emerging during the early period of medical history.
Trade Review"Davis' connection of the medical and the literary is exciting, and her knowledge of the texts she investigates and the history of American medicine is impressive. . . ." --
Virginia Quarterly ReviewTable of ContentsIntroduction; 1. Medical insight: Oliver Wendell Holmes and Elsie Venner; 2. 'Where soul it termed sentiment': sentience and transcendence in the works of Louisa May Alcott, Harriot K. Hunt and Margaret Fuller; 3. Irregular yet balanced: Elizabeth Stuart Phelps's and William Dean Howells's woman doctor novels; 4. Form follows function? Charlotte Perkins Gilman, re-presentation, and the literature of estrangement; 5. Black aesthetics: the race novels of Frances E. Watkins Harper, Charles W. Chestnutt and Pauline E. Hopkins; Notes; Index.
