The Limits of the Human: Fictions of Anomaly, Race and Gender in the Long Eighteenth Century

by Felicity A. Nussbaum

Overview

Felicity Nussbaum examines literary and cultural representations of human difference in England and its empire during the eighteenth century. Focusing especially on women's writing, Nussbaum analyzes it from the Restoration to abolition by considering a range of anomalies (defects, disease, and disability) as they intermingle with ideas of femininity, masculinity, and race to define "normalcy". Incorporating writings by Burney, Johnson, Sterne, Equiano and others, she covers a range of disabilities altered by emerging concepts of racial femininity and masculinity.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780521811675
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	05/15/2003
Pages:	350
Product dimensions:	5.98(w) x 9.02(h) x 0.94(d)

About the Author

Felicity Nussbaum is Professor of English at the University of California, Los Angeles. She is the author of Torrid Zones: Maternity, Sexuality and Empire in Eighteenth-Century English Narratives (1995).

Table of Contents

List of illustrations; Acknowledgments; Introduction: monstrous tales; Part I. Anomaly and Gender: 1. Fictions of defect: Aphra Behn and Eliza Haywood; 2. Effeminacy and femininity: Sarah Fielding, Elizabeth Montagu, and Johnson; 3. Odd women, mangled men: the bluestockings and Sterne; 4. Scarred women: Frances Burney and smallpox; Part II. Race and Gender: 5. Racial femininity: 'Our British Fair'; 6. Black women: why Imoinda turns white; 7. Black men: Equiano, Sancho, and being a man; 8. Black parts: racial counterfeit on stage; Coda: between races.

Editorial Reviews

"The moral impetus and humane sensibility of The Limits of the Human are evident . . ." Studies in English Literature 1500-1900

From the Publisher