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" Touchy Subjects: "
Hutchings-Goetz, Tracey
Molesworth, Jesse
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Latin Dissertation
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English
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| Record Number
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1114354
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| Doc. No
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TLpq2407276270
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| Main Entry
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Hutchings-Goetz, Tracey
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Molesworth, Jesse
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| Title & Author
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Touchy Subjects:\ Hutchings-Goetz, TraceyMolesworth, Jesse
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| College
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Indiana University
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| Date
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2020
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| student score
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2020
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| Degree
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Ph.D.
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| Page No
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228
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| Abstract
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This dissertation considers social and narrative value of the sense of touch in eighteenth-century British literature and culture. By paying close attention to moments of touching and being touched, this project reveals how haptic sensations subtended social relations in the period. For much of the eighteenth century, touch was understood as the primary means of making the external world internal, operating as a relational nexus between self and other, subject and object. But, by the end of the eighteenth century, the haptic would be redefined as an inherently individual and private sensation, rather than an experience essential to social or political relations. Moving from the inside of the body (“Nerves”) to the outside (“Skin” and “Hands”), and ending with the estrangement of touch from the body (“Invisible Hands”), the corporeal structure of my chapters demonstrates the variety of haptic sensations, even as it also asserts touch’s dependence upon the body. Through an analysis of a wide variety of contemporary sources, ranging from novels to scientific treatises, material culture, court records, popular engravings, philosophy, conduct books, and first-person accounts, Touchy Subjects reveals how touch was rendered private, individual, and untranslatable, and concludes that the eighteenth-century redefinition of touch contributes to a fundamentally alienated modern publicity.
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British Irish literature
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Eighteenth century
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Haptic
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Senses
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Sensory history
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Touch
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