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The first of its kind, this collection brings together writers from
diverse academic and nonacademic worlds to explore how Austen's
readers experience and process her novels' erotic power. Are Jane
Austen's novels sexy? For many Austen lovers, the answer is a
resounding "Yes!" From the moment Colin Firth stripped down to his
breeches and shirt in the 1995 BBC Pride and Prejudice, screen
adaptations inspired by Austen's novels have banked on their
ability to depict sexual tension and romantic desire. Meanwhile,
the success of spin-offs, sequels, and elaborations confirms that
Austen's novels have become a potent aphrodisiac for everyday
readers. Clearly, the fourteen million viewers who watched Firth's
unveiling were onto something: Austen's novels turn people on. Jane
Austen, Sex, and Romance: Engaging with Desire in the Novels and
Beyond brings together a range of voices-from literary scholars to
video game designers-to explore how different types of readers
experience the realm of desire and the erotic in all things Austen.
In this timely collection, writers, critics, journalists, and
authors of internet content weigh in on sex and romance in Austen's
works and in the conversations and creations the novels
inspire-from sequels to critical analyses to online role-playing
games. Contributors examine what is at stake for each set of Austen
enthusiasts when Eros is added to the equation, in so doing
building on the long tradition of Austen criticism and enriching
our appreciation of the novels.
In Telling Complexions Mary Ann O'Farrell explores the frequent use
of "the blush" in Victorian novels as a sign of characters' inner
emotions and desires. Through lively and textured readings of works
by such writers as Jane Austen, Elizabeth Gaskell, Charles Dickens,
and Henry James, O'Farrell illuminates literature's relation to the
body and the body's place in culture. In the process, she plots a
trajectory for the nineteenth-century novel's shift from the
practices of manners to the mode of self-consciousness. Although
the blush was used to tell the truth of character and body,
O'Farrell shows how it is actually undermined as a stable indicator
of character in novels such as Pride and Prejudice, Persuasion,
North and South, and David Copperfield. She reveals how these
writers then moved on in search of other bodily indicators of
mortification and desire, among them the swoon, the scar, and the
blunder. Providing unique and creative insights into the
constructedness of the body and its semiotic play in literature and
in culture, Telling Complexions includes parallel examples of the
blush in contemporary culture and describes ways that textualized
bodies are sometimes imagined to resist the constraints imposed by
such construction.
This collection breaks new ground in the area of gender studies
both because it creates a name for gender fantasy--virtual
gender--that introduces a new understanding of the concept, and in
expanding the idea of virtuality to include people and events in
history. The essays in "Virtual Gender" help identify and name the
persistent cultural desire for an imaginative space in which to
"put on" alternative gender identities, while examining as well the
equally persistent and consequent critique of that desire.
The sweep of the volume's coverage is impressive, ranging across
historical periods and academic disciplines, as contributors
consider the place of the body in gender fantasy and the
consequences of gender fantasy for real people and real bodies. The
essays investigate figures and topics including Amelia Earhart,
soap-opera chat groups, Elizabeth I, mesmerism, lesbianism in the
early modern period, cybergames, women in the federalist period,
the transgendered body, and performance art. Also examined are the
status of embodiment, the origins of gender, gender politics, the
pains of subjectivity, the uses of utopian fantasy, technological
advances and information technology, the experience of gendered
communities, and the role of gender in global politics.
Contributors include Harriette Andreadis, Seyla Benhabib, Charlotte
Canning, Bernice Hausman, Janel Mueller, Mary Ann O'Farrell, Kay
Schaffer, Sidonie Smith, Carroll Smith-Rosenberg, Helen F.
Thompson, Lynne Vallone, and Robyn Warhol. The book will appeal to
an interdisciplinary audience of scholars, critics, and students
with interests in gender, identity, and cyberculture.
Mary Ann O'Farrell is Associate Professor of English, Texas A &
M University. Lynne Vallone is Associate Professor of English,
Texas A & M University.
This collection breaks new ground in the area of gender studies
both because it creates a name for gender fantasy--virtual
gender--that introduces a new understanding of the concept, and in
expanding the idea of virtuality to include people and events in
history. The essays in "Virtual Gender" help identify and name the
persistent cultural desire for an imaginative space in which to
"put on" alternative gender identities, while examining as well the
equally persistent and consequent critique of that desire.
The sweep of the volume's coverage is impressive, ranging across
historical periods and academic disciplines, as contributors
consider the place of the body in gender fantasy and the
consequences of gender fantasy for real people and real bodies. The
essays investigate figures and topics including Amelia Earhart,
soap-opera chat groups, Elizabeth I, mesmerism, lesbianism in the
early modern period, cybergames, women in the federalist period,
the transgendered body, and performance art. Also examined are the
status of embodiment, the origins of gender, gender politics, the
pains of subjectivity, the uses of utopian fantasy, technological
advances and information technology, the experience of gendered
communities, and the role of gender in global politics.
Contributors include Harriette Andreadis, Seyla Benhabib, Charlotte
Canning, Bernice Hausman, Janel Mueller, Mary Ann O'Farrell, Kay
Schaffer, Sidonie Smith, Carroll Smith-Rosenberg, Helen F.
Thompson, Lynne Vallone, and Robyn Warhol. The book will appeal to
an interdisciplinary audience of scholars, critics, and students
with interests in gender, identity, and cyberculture.
Mary Ann O'Farrell is Associate Professor of English, Texas A &
M University. Lynne Vallone is Associate Professor of English,
Texas A & M University.
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