'Everyday troubles’ in the epistolary mind

We live in our body, and our body – in its constancy and its fluctuations – is intrinsic to our sense of self. The lived body is at the pulsing centre of the epistolary imaginary, channelled through the mental activity of figuring (and figuring out) competing forms of being in the world. In selected letters by leading nineteenth-century modern writers and artists, forms of embodied consciousness relay the work of the senses, respond to the environment, probe mental crises, gauge cultural pressures, navigate constraints of time, and interact with other bodies and material things. This seminar paper exposes some of the intricate relations of letter-writing and the embodied mind, their co-dependency, and their shared subjectivity. The paper pays special attention to the epistolary articulacy of the embodied consciousness in modes that stretch from the documentary to the fantastic. 

All welcome. Registration not required.

This event has been organised by the Centre for French and Francophone Research. The centre provides a showcase for the diversity of French and Francophone studies in a global context across many disciplines at UCL, including literary studies, history, philosophy, art history, anthropology, global health, and the physical sciences. The goal is to create a space for researchers and students from across the university broadly interested in the French-speaking world to share their work and to promote interdisciplinary collaboration.

Image attribution: Edvard Munch, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons