Disgust is a strong, immediate visceral reaction. While it may feel like a purely instinctive response, the cultural meanings ascribed to particular objects, bodies or behaviours play a significant role in determining whether or not they are experienced as disgusting. This interplay between bodies and ideas makes disgust a powerful source of metaphor in narrative fiction. For women's writing, disgust is particularly problematic due to a misogynistic tradition in which the female body has often been coded as disgusting.
This book offers a comparative study of recently published texts by eight female authors writing in French and German - Marie Darrieussecq, Amelie Nothomb, Lorette Nobecourt, Alina Reyes, Sibylle Berg, Jenny Erpenbeck, Monika Maron and Charlotte Roche - in terms of an aesthetics of disgust and asks to what extent disgust can be seen as a useful tool for feminist criticism. Since the late 1990s there have been increasing levels of academic interest in disgust in various disciplines, ranging from clinical psychology to aesthetics and moral philosophy. As one of the first full-length studies to consider literary uses of disgust, this book both contributes to the emerging field of disgust theory and offers a new contribution to the study of women's writing.
- ISBN10 3035305099
- ISBN13 9783035305098
- Publish Date 16 September 2013 (first published 1 January 2013)
- Publish Status Active
- Publish Country CH
- Imprint Peter Lang Gmbh, Internationaler Verlag Der Wissenschaften
- Edition 250th ed.
- Format eBook
- Pages 286
- Language English