Disability's Abstraction in Tristram Shandy and Persuasion.

  • Published In: Eighteenth-Century Studies, 2025, v. 58, n. 2. P. 169 1 of 3

  • Database: Academic Search Ultimate 2 of 3

  • Authored By: Thulin, Lesley 3 of 3

Abstract

This article considers the figural alongside the material in a reading of Laurence Sterne's The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman (1759–67) and Jane Austen's Persuasion (1817)—novels that displace wartime disability through deictic pointing and syllepsis, on the one hand, and euphemism and indirect narration, on the other. Drawing on historical-materialist disability studies, I argue that Sterne primes us to understand these techniques of displacement as figurations of disability's materialist dimension, underscoring, in Austen's case, disability's imbrication with a capitalist political economy and, in turn, a traumatized historical present. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Additional Information

  • Source:Eighteenth-Century Studies. 2025/01, Vol. 58, Issue 2, p169
  • Document Type:Article
  • Subject Area:Religion and Philosophy
  • Publication Date:2025
  • ISSN:0013-2586
  • DOI:10.1353/ecs.2025.a949947
  • Accession Number:182412496
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