Project

Intracorporeal Narratives: Reading Internal Biology in Women’s Literature, 1880s-1930s

Acronym
INTRARIB
Code
41D03421
Duration
01 September 2021 → 31 August 2023
Funding
European funding: framework programme, Regional and community funding: Special Research Fund
Research disciplines
  • Humanities
    • Early modern literature
Keywords
body
 
Project description

Do visualisations of the body's internal organs and inner workings change through time? How does literature reflect medical developments and discoveries? Do metaphors help us visualise these systems and parts: hormones as postal packages, the sperm and egg as static and kinetic, the biological clock? The EU-funded INTRARIB project will answer these questions by focusing on the medical humanities. Specifically, it will explore how British and American women writers of the late 19th and 20th centuries visualised and communicated bodily experiences through ‘intracorporeal’ descriptions. It will examine how suffering is rationalised and perceived. It will also study the influence of gendered notions.