The Sculptural Body in Victorian Literature : : Encrypted Sexualities / / Patricia Pulham.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter Edinburgh University Press Complete eBook-Package 2020
• VerfasserIn: Pulham, Patricia,
• MitwirkendeR: Wolfreys, Julian,
• Place / Publishing House: Edinburgh : : Edinburgh University Press, , [2022]; ©2020
• Year of Publication: 2022
• Language: English
• Series: Edinburgh Critical Studies in Victorian Culture : ECSVC
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (240 p.) :; 14 B/W illustrations 4 colour illustrations 14 black and white & 4 colour illustrations

Explores Victorian writers’ erotic investment in statuesTheorises the function of the sculptural body in Victorian poetry and proseOffers thorough readings of sculpture in Victorian texts and contextsExamines a wide range of works by well-known and lesser-known writers of the period (e.g. Thomas Hardy, John Ruskin, Oscar Wilde, Walter Pater, Vernon Lee, Olive Custance, Arthur O’Shaughnessy)Extends the British focus to encompass nineteenth-century European and American writings This book argues that, in Victorian literature, desires which cannot be openly acknowledged are often buried and encrypted in the marble bodies of statues. Examining sculpture’s ubiquity in Victorian galleries and museums Pulham observes that, while touch is prohibited in these cultural locations, Victorian texts offer ‘safe’ spaces where statues may be kissed or caressed using metaphors of tactility that work at the intersections of touch and vision to permit the recovery of forbidden love.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Contents -- List of Illustrations -- Series Editor’s Preface -- Acknowledgements -- Introduction -- 1. Nineteenth-Century Pygmalions: The Sexual Politics of Tactility -- 2. Artworks in Marble: Capturing Venus in Durable Form -- 3. ‘Of marble men and maidens’: Sculptural Transformations -- 4. Statuephilia and the Love of the Impossible -- 5. Between Death and Sleep: Libidinal Entombments -- Bibliography -- Index