Reading the Body in the Eighteenth-Century Novel [Hardcover]

McMaster's lively study looks at the various codes by which Eighteenth-century novelists made the minds of their characters legible through their bodies. She tellingly explores the discourses of medicine, physiognomy, gesture and facial expression, completely familiar to contemporary readers but not to us, in ways that enrich our reading of such classics as Clarissa and Tristram Shandy , as well as of novels by Fanny Burney, Mary Wollstonecraft and Jane Austen.List of Illustrations Preface Acknowledgements Abbreviations The Body Inside the Skin: The Medical Model The Body Illegible: Tristram Shandy Physiognomy: The Index of the Mind Facial Expression: The Mind's Construction in the Face Reading and Re-Encoding the Body: Clarissa Gesture: Suiting the Action to the Word Body Language Censored: Camilla Epilogue: And On to Jane Austen Works Cited Index

'Offering insight into the ways in which eighteenth-century novelists expected their readers to draw on common understandings about expression, gesture and character, this is a lively and useful study.' - Times Literary Supplement

'McMaster productively alerts us to the rich languages of the body in the eighteenth century by both parsing out their antecedents and illuminating the prevalence of expressive bodies in the novelistic tradition.' - Tita Chico, Eighteenth-Century Studies