Description:
Explores Victorian writers' erotic investment in statues
Theorises 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, transgressive desires that 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 sculptures may be kissed or caressed using metaphors of tactility that work at the intersections of touch and vision and permit the recovery of forbidden love.
Brief description: Patricia Pulham is Professor of Victorian Literature at the University of Surrey and editor of the EUP journal, Victoriographies. Her research focuses on Victorian literature, culture and the visual arts, and she has published widely on a range of nineteenth-century authors. She joined the University of Surrey in 2017 where she is Director of Research in the School of Literature and Languages and teaches modules on the Victorian fin-de-siècle and neo-Victorian literature.
Review Quotes: The Sculptural Body in Victorian Literature is a pertinently thought-provoking text. Its contents are thoroughly researched and productively interdisciplinary, and I do not doubt that the book will prove highly useful to those researching in gender and sexuality studies, museum studies, and nineteenth-century literature and art history for many years to come. Moving forward, I hope that relevant scholars will begin to work on answering Pulham's concluding call for more research to be undertaken into instances where literature, sculpture, race, and/or national identity intersect.--Caitlin Doley, University of York "British Association for Victorian Studies"