| dc.identifier.uri | http://hdl.handle.net/11401/77549 | |
| dc.description.sponsorship | This work is sponsored by the Stony Brook University Graduate School in compliance with the requirements for completion of degree. | en_US |
| dc.format | Monograph | |
| dc.format.medium | Electronic Resource | en_US |
| dc.language.iso | en_US | |
| dc.publisher | The Graduate School, Stony Brook University: Stony Brook, NY. | |
| dc.type | Dissertation | |
| dcterms.abstract | During the nineteenth century, the hand was a contested site of knowledge. Anatomists and physiologists viewed the hand as an emblem of human ascension; simultaneously, scientific theologians argued that the hand evinced God's intervention in human evolution. Pseudo-scientists popularized the erotic nature of tactile sensation located in the hands, as well as the practices of hand-phrenology, palmistry, and graphology that sought to identify individuals based on the surface character of their hands. Etiquette books acknowledge the important role handshakes played in social intercourse while concurrently establishing rules to regulate such tactile interactions and the unspoken sentiments that they might convey. This dissertation queries how these discourses interested in mapping and policing hands, particularly female hands, during the nineteenth century come to bear on literature of the period. A predominant feature of Victorian novels, hands that touch have long been overlooked by critics as a form of both social and sexual communication in its own right. Touching hands did not merely signify communication for the Victorians, it was a form of communication that novelists invoked as a means of acknowledging and commenting on the material conditions of gender and the politics of sexual expression that otherwise went unspoken during the nineteenth century. Novelists such as the Brontës, Elizabeth Gaskell, George Eliot, Thomas Hardy, and Bram Stoker, to name a few, needed not speak of rape, sexual desire, masturbation, or consummation directly; rather, characters' uninvited hand-grasps, lengthy handshakes, or illicit caresses conveyed what could not be written. I introduce the term `manual intercourse' to identify this literary phenomenon wherein representations of touching hands and the tactile sensations that those touches arouse function as a haptic form of communication not restricted by language taboos or the sociocultural structural conventions that regulate speech. When hands touch in novels, they haptically engage each other, conveying emotion, sentiment, and desire through the quality, intensity, and duration of the touch itself. This dissertation situates manual intercourse in its historical, critical, theoretical, and erotic contexts, considering a variety of works that span genres, disciplines, and centuries. | |
| dcterms.abstract | During the nineteenth century, the hand was a contested site of knowledge. Anatomists and physiologists viewed the hand as an emblem of human ascension; simultaneously, scientific theologians argued that the hand evinced God's intervention in human evolution. Pseudo-scientists popularized the erotic nature of tactile sensation located in the hands, as well as the practices of hand-phrenology, palmistry, and graphology that sought to identify individuals based on the surface character of their hands. Etiquette books acknowledge the important role handshakes played in social intercourse while concurrently establishing rules to regulate such tactile interactions and the unspoken sentiments that they might convey. This dissertation queries how these discourses interested in mapping and policing hands, particularly female hands, during the nineteenth century come to bear on literature of the period. A predominant feature of Victorian novels, hands that touch have long been overlooked by critics as a form of both social and sexual communication in its own right. Touching hands did not merely signify communication for the Victorians, it was a form of communication that novelists invoked as a means of acknowledging and commenting on the material conditions of gender and the politics of sexual expression that otherwise went unspoken during the nineteenth century. Novelists such as the Brontës, Elizabeth Gaskell, George Eliot, Thomas Hardy, and Bram Stoker, to name a few, needed not speak of rape, sexual desire, masturbation, or consummation directly; rather, characters' uninvited hand-grasps, lengthy handshakes, or illicit caresses conveyed what could not be written. I introduce the term `manual intercourse' to identify this literary phenomenon wherein representations of touching hands and the tactile sensations that those touches arouse function as a haptic form of communication not restricted by language taboos or the sociocultural structural conventions that regulate speech. When hands touch in novels, they haptically engage each other, conveying emotion, sentiment, and desire through the quality, intensity, and duration of the touch itself. This dissertation situates manual intercourse in its historical, critical, theoretical, and erotic contexts, considering a variety of works that span genres, disciplines, and centuries. | |
| dcterms.available | 2017-09-20T16:52:53Z | |
| dcterms.contributor | Manning, Peter | en_US |
| dcterms.contributor | Munich, Adrienne | en_US |
| dcterms.contributor | Diedrich, Lisa | en_US |
| dcterms.contributor | Colley, Ann. | en_US |
| dcterms.creator | Cox, Kimberly Nicole | |
| dcterms.dateAccepted | 2017-09-20T16:52:53Z | |
| dcterms.dateSubmitted | 2017-09-20T16:52:53Z | |
| dcterms.description | Department of English. | en_US |
| dcterms.extent | 346 pg. | en_US |
| dcterms.format | Application/PDF | en_US |
| dcterms.format | Monograph | |
| dcterms.identifier | http://hdl.handle.net/11401/77549 | |
| dcterms.issued | 2015-08-01 | |
| dcterms.language | en_US | |
| dcterms.provenance | Made available in DSpace on 2017-09-20T16:52:53Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1
Cox_grad.sunysb_0771E_12166.pdf: 3361803 bytes, checksum: 0456203e9b925fe631341d63e17c7702 (MD5)
Previous issue date: 2014 | en |
| dcterms.publisher | The Graduate School, Stony Brook University: Stony Brook, NY. | |
| dcterms.subject | Eighteenth Century, Hands, Manual Intercourse, Sexuality, Touch, Victorian | |
| dcterms.subject | British and Irish literature | |
| dcterms.title | When Hands Touch: Manual Intercourse in Victorian Literature | |
| dcterms.type | Dissertation | |
