The Body in Swift and Defoe Flynn Paperback Cambridge University Press

The Body in Swift and DefoeAuthor(s): Carol Houlihan Flynn\nFormat: Paperback\nPublisher: Cambridge University Press, United Kingdom\nImprint: Cambridge University Press\nISBN-13: 9780521021654, 978-0521021654\nSynopsis\nThis original book takes a new look at problems surrounding the physical, material nature of the human body, in particular as represented in the works of Jonathan Swift and Daniel Defoe. It examines the role that literary invention (with its rhetorical and linguistic strategies) plays in expressing and exploring the problems of physicality, and deals with issues such as sexuality, cannibalism, scatology and the fear of contagion. Swift and Defoe are seen as writers confronting the essentially modern problem of what it is to be human in a rapidly developing consumer economy, where individual bodies, beset by poverty and disease, are felt to be threatened by the enveloping masses of urban crowds. In an eclectic synthesis of recent approaches, Carol Flynn works into her.