Carol Flynn's challenging approach reviews the cost of being human, the 'expense' of material as opposed to spiritual life in eighteenth-century society, as it is revealed in its literature.
Inhaltsverzeichnis
Introduction: literary remains: the body as matter for text; 1. Dull organs: the matter of the body in the plague year; 2. The burthen in the belly; 3. Consuming desires: Defoe's sexual systems; 4. Flesh and blood: Swift's sexual strategies; 5. The ladies: d--ned, insolent, proud, unmannerly sluts; 6. Chains of consumption: the bodies of the poor; 7. Consumptive fictions: cannibalism in Defoe and Swift; Afterword: . . . suppose me dead; and then suppose . . . ; Notes.