Body in Literature

The aim of this course is to introduce some of the most influential ways in which literary writing has depicted and explored the human body, and to explore such ideas as identity, gender, desire, sex, violence, beauty and monstrosity. The human body has been depicted in a wide variety of different ways across a range of cultural and historical locations. It has been described, variously, as a biological entity, clothing for the soul, a site of cultural production, a psychosexual construct and a material encumbrance. Each of these different approaches brings with it a range of anthropological, political, theological and psychological discourses that explore and construct identities and subject positions. The body is at once a locus of invention and self-expression, and also an object of domination and control. In contemporary culture it is also located at the heart of debates about race, gender and sexuality This course will consider the ways in which the human body has been a central object of discussion in literature from the Renaissance onwards. It will encourage students to explore the politics of bodily representation, in terms of both how the body has been depicted and how it has become a trope employed to figure wider social and philosophical ideas. They will also be asked to think about how the way the body is figured differs between genres of writing and across different historical periods.   Credit Level: 10 Year taken: Year 3 Undergraduate