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Beyond Bodies
Gender, Literature and the Enigma of Consciousness
Series: - Consciousness, Literature and the Arts, Volume: 38
Author:
âArticulations and expressions of gender can be destabilising, transgressive, revolutionary and radical, encompassing both a painful legacy of oppression and a joyous exploration of new experience.â Analysing key texts from the 19th to 21st centuries, this book explores a range of British and Anglophone authors to contextualise womenâs writing and feminist theory with ongoing debates in consciousness studies. Discussing writers who strive to redefine the gendered world of âsexualizedâ space, whether internal or external, mental or physical, this book argues how the âdelusionâ of gender difference can be addressed and challenged. In literary theory and in representations of the female body in literature, identity has increasingly become a shifting, multiple, renegotiableâand controversialâconcept. While acknowledging historical and cultural constructions of sexuality, âwriting the bodyâ must ultimately incorporate knowledge of human consciousness. Here, an understanding of consciousness from contemporary science (especially quantum theory)âas the fundamental building block of existence, beyond the bodyâallows unique insights into literary texts to elucidate the problem of subjectivity and what it means to be human. Including discussion of topics such as feminism and androgyny, agency and entrapment, masculinities and masquerade, insanity and emotion, and individual and social empowerment, this study also creates a lively engagement with the literary process as a means of fathoming the âenigmaâ of consciousness.
Daphne Grace is Professor of English, specializing in postcolonial and transnational literature, gender and womenâs studies, in addition to British literature of the 19th to 21st centuries. She currently teaches at the University of the Bahamas, and has also previously taught at Sussex University, England, and Eastern Mediterranean University in Cyprus.
Chapter One: Cognition, consciousness and literary contexts
Chapter Two: Forging roads into consciousness: rasa and the influence of emotion in Wuthering Heights
Chapter Three: Isolating consciousness: secrets, silencing and insanity
Chapter Four: Beyond the veils of consciousness: individual and collective awareness in the novels of George Eliot
Chapter Five: Shifts into quantum consciousness: Virginia Woolfâs moments of being
Chapter Six: Consciousness and freedom: womenâs space in the twentieth-century Bildungsroman
Chapter Seven: Beyond gender myths: Angela Carterâs feminist fables
Chapter Eight: Transforming gender: passion, desire and consciousness
Chapter Nine: Quests and questions of consciousness: Margaret Atwoodâs post-human futures
Chapter Ten: Consciousness and conscience: the ethics of enlightenment
Bibliography
Index
Chapter Two: Forging roads into consciousness: rasa and the influence of emotion in Wuthering Heights
Chapter Three: Isolating consciousness: secrets, silencing and insanity
Chapter Four: Beyond the veils of consciousness: individual and collective awareness in the novels of George Eliot
Chapter Five: Shifts into quantum consciousness: Virginia Woolfâs moments of being
Chapter Six: Consciousness and freedom: womenâs space in the twentieth-century Bildungsroman
Chapter Seven: Beyond gender myths: Angela Carterâs feminist fables
Chapter Eight: Transforming gender: passion, desire and consciousness
Chapter Nine: Quests and questions of consciousness: Margaret Atwoodâs post-human futures
Chapter Ten: Consciousness and conscience: the ethics of enlightenment
Bibliography
Index