scholarly journals “Losing a Leg to Gain a Wife”: Marriage, Gender, and the Prosthetic Body Part

2021 ◽  
pp. 175-225
Author(s):  
Ryan Sweet

AbstractThis chapter traces representations of male and female prosthesis users in the marriage plot, the nineteenth-century narrative form most heavily populated by users of prosthetic devices. Building on the work of scholars such as Martha Stoddard Holmes and Talia Schaffer, who expose the important roles that disabled characters perform in Victorian marriage plots, this chapter identifies the prosthesis-marriage plot as a related yet separately identifiable formulaic plot structure. As the chapter argues, when viewed collectively, and at times also individually, prosthesis-marriage plots present unstable affective and imaginative treatments of prosthesis users. These representations shed light on the complex ways in which discourses of gender, class, and ableism intersect and how, in particular instances, the bodily status quo is challenged, brought into question, or even outright rejected.

Author(s):  
Kylee-Anne Hingston

Prompted by Victorians’ frequent conflation of body and text, the introduction argues that Victorian fiction’s narrative form, specifically plot structure and focalization, contributed to the development of disability as a concept; in particular, as fiction’s form developed from the massive hybrid novels of the early decades of the nineteenth century to the case-study length of fin-de-siècle mysteries, disability became increasingly medicalized, moving from the position of spectacle to specimen. The chapter addresses focalization’s evocation of the perceiving body, linking focalization to theories of staring and the specular in disability studies, and it provides a history of scholarship on Victorian illness and disability, thus placing the book’s argument in the fields of narratology, disability studies, and Victorian studies.


2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 1
Author(s):  
Editors of the JIOWS

The editors are proud to present the first issue of the fourth volume of the Journal of Indian Ocean World Studies. This issue contains three articles, by James Francis Warren (Murdoch University), Kelsey McFaul (University of California, Santa Cruz), and Marek Pawelczak (University of Warsaw), respectively. Warren’s and McFaul’s articles take different approaches to the growing body of work that discusses pirates in the Indian Ocean World, past and present. Warren’s article is historical, exploring the life and times of Julano Taupan in the nineteenth-century Philippines. He invites us to question the meaning of the word ‘pirate’ and the several ways in which Taupan’s life has been interpreted by different European colonists and by anti-colonial movements from the mid-nineteenth century to the present day. McFaul’s article, meanwhile, takes a literary approach to discuss the much more recent phenomenon of Somali Piracy, which reached its apex in the last decade. Its contribution is to analyse the works of authors based in the region, challenging paradigms that have mostly been developed from analysis of works written in the West. Finally, Pawelczak’s article is a legal history of British jurisdiction in mid-late nineteenth-century Zanzibar. It examines one of the facets that underpinned European influence in the western Indian Ocean World before the establishment of colonial rule. In sum, this issue uses two key threads to shed light on the complex relationships between European and other Western powers and the Indian Ocean World.


Author(s):  
Adam J. Silverstein

This book examines the ways in which the biblical book of Esther was read, understood, and used in Muslim lands, from ancient to modern times. It zeroes-in on a selection of case studies, covering works from various periods and regions of the Muslim world, including the Qur’an, premodern historical chronicles and literary works, the writings of a nineteenth-century Shia feminist, a twentieth-century Iranian dictionary, and others. These case studies demonstrate that Muslim sources contain valuable materials on Esther, which shed light both on the Esther story itself and on the Muslim peoples and cultures that received it. The book argues that Muslim sources preserve important, pre-Islamic materials on Esther that have not survived elsewhere, some of which offer answers to ancient questions about Esther, such as the meaning of Haman’s epithet in the Greek versions of the story, the reason why Mordecai refused to prostrate himself before Haman, and the literary context of the “plot of the eunuchs” to kill the Persian king. Furthermore, throughout the book we will see how each author’s cultural and religious background influenced his or her understanding and retelling of the Esther story: In particular, it will be shown that Persian Muslims (and Jews) were often forced to reconcile or choose between the conflicting historical narratives provided by their religious and cultural heritages respectively.


2020 ◽  
Vol 2019 ◽  
pp. 59-65
Author(s):  
Paul CAZALBOU ◽  

The penal protection of property in French law based on texts dating back to the nineteenth century has been largely renewed in recent years. This intervention is intended to shed light on the relationship that may exist between property in the civil sense and the penal protection it enjoys. Concept, object and means of this protection then draw a model of property in the penal sense which is not always in agreement with its civilistic conception.


Author(s):  
Paul Hetherington ◽  
Cassandra Atherton

This is the first book of its kind — an introduction to the history, development, and features of English-language prose poetry, an increasingly important and popular literary form that is still too little understood and appreciated. The book introduces prose poetry's key characteristics, charts its evolution from the nineteenth-century to the present, and discusses many historical and contemporary prose poems that both demonstrate their great diversity around the Anglophone world and show why they represent some of today's most inventive writing. A prose poem looks like prose but reads like poetry: it lacks the line breaks of other poetic forms but employs poetic techniques, such as internal rhyme, repetition, and compression. The book explains how this form opens new spaces for writers to create riveting works that reshape the resources of prose while redefining the poetic. Discussing prose poetry' s precursors, including William Wordsworth and Walt Whitman, and prose poets such as Charles Simic, Russell Edson, Lydia Davis, and Claudia Rankine, the book pays equal attention to male and female prose poets, documenting women's essential but frequently unacknowledged contributions to the genre. Revealing how prose poetry tests boundaries and challenges conventions to open up new imaginative vistas, this is an essential book for all readers, students, teachers, and writers of prose poetry.


2020 ◽  
Vol 29 (2) ◽  
pp. 141-159
Author(s):  
Jan Adriaan Schlebusch

Abstract In his strategic political positioning and engagement in the nineteenth century, Groen van Prinsterer looked towards both the past and the future. Rhetorically, he appealed to the past as a vindication of the truth and practicality of his anti-revolutionary position. He also expressed optimism for the success of his convictions and political goals in the future. This optimism was reflected in the confidence with which he engaged politically, despite experiencing numerous setbacks in his career. Relying on the phenomenological-narrative approach of David Carr, I highlight the motives and strategies behind Groen’s political activity, and reveal that the past and the future in Groen’s narrative provide the strategic framework for his rhetoric, and the basis for his activism. I accentuate how the emphasis of his narrative shifts away from the status quo and thus enables a type of political engagement that proved historically significant for the early consolidation of the Dutch constitutional democracy.


2014 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 106-117
Author(s):  
REMINA SIMA

Abstract The aim of this paper is to illustrate the public and private spheres. The former represents the area in which each of us carries out their daily activities, while the latter is mirrored by the home. Kate Chopin and Charlotte Perkins Gilman are two salient nineteenth-century writers who shape the everyday life of the historical period they lived in, within their literary works that shed light on the areas under discussion.


2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 161-172
Author(s):  
Louise Ströbeck

Reiterated and cursorily criticised generalisations of attributes for male and female in grave goods, have since the first half of the nineteenth century created an oversimplified yet politically intricate image of a specific task differentiation between men and women in prehistory. Ideals of male and female roles and tasks in the interpreter’s contemporary society have been described as universals in terms of binary oppositional pairs, or spheres, such as private/domestic-public. The dichotomies used for analysing and attributing male and female tasks have given preference to stereotypes, and the very formulation of the oppositional concepts for activity areas expresses ideological valuations ofmale and female. This article stresses the need for analysing the origin of concepts, and it seeks new and alternative ways of perceiving task differentiation.


2018 ◽  
Vol 46 (5) ◽  
pp. 892-910
Author(s):  
Jonna Rock

This article highlights issues pertaining to the Sephardim ([-im] is the masculine plural Hebrew ending and Sepharad is the Hebrew name for Spain. Sephardim thus literally means the Jews of Spain) in Sarajevo from the time of their arrival in the Ottoman Empire in the late fifteenth century until the present day. I describe the status quo for the Sephardi minority in post-Ottoman Sarajevo, in the first and second Yugoslavia, and in today's post-Communist Sarajevo, the capital of Bosnia and Herzegovina. The objective is to shed light on how historic preconditions have influenced identity formation as it expresses itself from a Sephardic perspective. The aim is moreover to generate knowledge of the circumstances that affected how Sephardim came to understand themselves in terms of their Jewish identification. I present empirical findings from my semi-structured interviews with Sarajevo Sephardim of different generations (2015 and 2016). I argue that while none of the interlocutors conceive of Jewish identification as divergent from halachic interpretations of matrilineal descent, they moreover propose other conceptions of what it means to be Jewish, such as celebrating Shabbat and other Jewish holidays, and other patterns of socialization. At the same time, these individuals also assert alternative forms of being Bosnian, one that includes multiple ethnicities, and multiple religious ascriptions. This study elucidates a little-explored history and sheds light on the ways in which historical conditions have shaped contemporary, layered framings of identification among Sarajevo's current Jewish population. This article is relevant for those interested in contemporary Sephardic Bosnian culture and in the role and function of ideology in creating conditions for identity formation and transformation.


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