| "From Dissection to Connection: The Preservative Power of the Empathetic Gaze in Romantic Literature" examines the inherent conflicts between varying medical gazes at abnormal bodies during the Romantic period, and examines, specifically, how the empathetic gaze---a way of medical looking based on intuition, emotion, instinct and experience---evolves and works within Romantic texts to preserve abnormal bodies and maintain their disruptive energy. Through revisionary close readings of several texts including Mary Seacole's The Wonderful Adventures of Mrs. Seacole In Many Lands, Maria Edgeworth's Belinda, and Thomas de Quincey's Confessions of an English Opium Eater, the dissertation differentiates the empathetic gaze from its colder clinical counterpart, explores its effect on various types of abnormal bodies, and supplements critical readings that attempt to reconcile Romantic texts with the medical science of the Romantic period. |
