Desire and Impaired Eyesight: Thomas Hardy’s Clinical Metaphors of Affect
This paper considers the clinical terms used by Thomas Hardy to build a model of misvision and missed opportunity. The glasses laid on the landscape in one of Hardy’s iconic drawings sem to materialize the object-gaze, and may also be read as a representation of his appropriation of the medical gaze...
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| Vydáno v: | URI:https://journals.openedition.org/fathom, |
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| Hlavní autor: | |
| Médium: | Article ou chapitre numérique |
| Jazyk: | Anglais |
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FATHOM
2018
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| Témata: | |
| On-line přístup: | Accès Université d'Orléans et IFPM Accès Université d'Orléans et IFPM |
| Shrnutí: | This paper considers the clinical terms used by Thomas Hardy to build a model of misvision and missed opportunity. The glasses laid on the landscape in one of Hardy’s iconic drawings sem to materialize the object-gaze, and may also be read as a representation of his appropriation of the medical gaze. He transposes ophtalmological conditions (the cataract, gutta serena) or technological tools (X-Rays) to engage with the corporeal, as well as mental, nature of desire and its misdirections, or to explore the haunting ability to strip the present, and see the past with its compelling hallucinatory presence. Drawing upon the readings of J. Hillis Miller, Linda M. Shires and Rosemarie Morgan, as well as Annie Ramel, Laurence Estanove and Isabelle Gadoin, this paper considers the mediation of the gaze and its paradoxical remediation through an operation that all but shatters the self, a process that shapes the poems written after Emma’s death. It then takes Far from the Madding Crowd as its central case study. The novel proves a landmark in Hardy’s writing career, as he experiments with visual modalities to diagnose misdirected desire and emotional flaws, the “phantom[s] of his own figuring” that he dramatizes as physiological flaws in the eye, thereby foreshadowing today’s neurological and trauma studies. |
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