Death and the Body in the Eighteenth-Century Novel

FAIN: FT-259950-18

Jolene Zigarovich
University of Northern Iowa (Cedar Falls, IA 50614-0001)

Research leading to a book on the changing attitudes toward death, funeral practices, and mortality as reflected in 18^th-century British novels.

Without a book-length study of death in eighteenth-century Britain, historical facts concerning funerary practices and the culture’s overall relationship with mortality are only beginning to be understood. By incorporating a variety of historical discourses–wills, undertaking histories, medical studies, philosophical treatises and religious tracts–my project illuminates a shift in control over death and the body from religious institutions to the individual, which resulted in secular, aesthetic approaches to death and dying. Preserving Clarissa, and other Morbid Curiosities in the Eighteenth-Century Novel reveals that the body itself—its parts, and its preserved, visual representation—functioned as erotic memento, and it suggests that preserved remains became symbols of individuality and subjectivity. This project thereby forces us to reassess the eighteenth-century response to and representation of the dead and dead-like body, and its fetishized purpose and use in fiction.

Associated Products

Death and the Body in the Eighteenth-Century Novel (Book)
Title: Death and the Body in the Eighteenth-Century Novel
Author: Jolene Zigarovich
Year: 2023
Primary URL: https://www.worldcat.org/search?q=1512823775
Primary URL Description: WorldCat entry (1512823775)
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
Type: Single author monograph
ISBN: 1512823775

Death and the Body in the Eighteenth-Century Novel (Book)
Title: Death and the Body in the Eighteenth-Century Novel
Author: Jolene Zigarovich
Abstract: Death and the Body in the Eighteenth-Century Novel demonstrates that archives continually speak to the period’s rising funeral and mourning culture, as well as the increasing commodification of death and mourning typically associated with nineteenth-century practices. Drawing on a variety of historical discourses—such as wills, undertaking histories, medical treatises and textbooks, anatomical studies, philosophical treatises, and religious tracts and sermons—the book contributes to a fuller understanding of the history of death in the Enlightenment and its narrative transformation. Death and the Body in the Eighteenth-Century Novel not only offers new insights about the effect of a growing secularization and commodification of death on the culture and its productions, but also fills critical gaps in the history of death, using narrative as a distinct literary marker. As anatomists dissected, undertakers preserved, jewelers encased, and artists figured the corpse, so too the novelist portrayed bodily artifacts. Why are these morbid forms of materiality entombed in the novel? Jolene Zigarovich addresses this complex question by claiming that the body itself—its parts, or its preserved representation—functioned as secular memento, suggesting that preserved remains became symbols of individuality and subjectivity. To support the conception that in this period notions of self and knowing center upon theories of the tactile and material, the chapters are organized around sensory conceptions and bodily materials such as touch, preserved flesh, bowel, heart, wax, hair, and bone. Including numerous visual examples, the book also argues that the relic represents the slippage between corpse and treasure, sentimentality and materialism, and corporeal fetish and aesthetic accessory. Zigarovich’s analysis compels us to reassess the eighteenth-century response to and representation of the dead and dead-like body, and its material purpose and use in fiction.
Year: 2023
Primary URL: https://www.pennpress.org/9781512823776/death-and-the-body-in-the-eighteenth-century-novel/
Primary URL Description: Penn Press site for book
Access Model: purchase only
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
Type: Single author monograph
ISBN: 9781512823776
Copy sent to NEH?: Yes

---