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E-book Reading Breath in Literature

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Penilaian

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Breath is an autonomic function that is essential for life. Luce Irigaray writes, in “The Age of Breath,” “breathing, in fact, corresponds to the first autonomous gesture of a human being.”1 In a less anthropocentric, more physiological sense, breath, as a term, catches and brings together all those processes by which beings with lungs take in and release air: the mechanical, the chemical, the affective and the metaphoric. The dia-phragm contracts. It drops. A vacuum appears in the chest cavity, which allows the lungs to expand with air. While the lungs are surfeit with air, oxygen passes through thin membranes in the alveoli to bond with hae-moglobin, which, in turn, releases its load of carbon dioxide. The expe-rience can be ecstatic, as for Keri Hulme in this description of breathing from Te Kaihau/The Windeater: “It was ecstasy, it was sweet, air soughing in and all my little alveoli singing away with joy and oxygen-energy coursing through every space and particle of me.”2 It may also be deeply distressing, as in this passage by Michael Symmons Roberts in Breath:Baras closes his eyes and tries to settle his breath into a slower, deeper rhythm. Ever since his lungs were damaged, he has found it hard to see it as a failure of his own body. Somehow now on the brink of hav-ing his weakest lung cut out and replaced with a new one, he can’t locate the problem in his own chest. Sure his chest is heaving as his lungs try to drag in the air, but it still feels like a problem with the air, not with his own body. On that April morning so many years ago the air itself was altered, and his sensitive lungs failed to adapt. ... His lungs were designed to take the cream off the thick air, and now the cream has gone he cannot recalibrate.3For Hulme’s narrator, breath brings a heightened bodily connection to her environment. Baras’s breathing, on the other hand, seems to alien-ate him from his environment. Yet, in both descriptions, a clear interest in the mechanical and the chemical aspects of breathing is subordinated to figurative language. For Hulme, this figurative language emerges in the verbs she chooses: breath “soughs” like the wind, “sings” like the voice, “courses” like water. Baras finds similar expression in metaphor: “His lungs were designed to take the cream off the thick air.” Literary representations of breathing like these, whether pleasant or unpleasant, demonstrate a grammar at work in thinking and writing about breath. This book responds to this implicit demand for a grammar of breath by developing, through five case studies, methodologies for considering breath in the literary medical humanities.

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Ketersediaan

Informasi Detail

Judul Seri

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No. Panggil

801 ROS r

Penerbit

Switzerland : Springer Nature., 2019

Deskripsi Fisik

141 hlm

Bahasa

English

ISBN/ISSN

9783319999487

Klasifikasi

801

Tipe Isi

text

Tipe Media

computer

Tipe Pembawa

online resource

Edisi

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Subjek

Philosophy and Theory of Literatures

Info Detail Spesifik

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Pernyataan Tanggungjawab

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Versi lain/terkait

Lampiran Berkas

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