Tag: Fictions of Affliction
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Queer and unked: Disability, monstrosity, and George Eliot’s “Sympathy”
Christina LeeKent, United Kingdom In The Mill on the Floss, the intellectual and sensitive Philip Wakem, who has a curved spine from a fall in infancy, is called “a queer fellow, a humpback, and the son of a rogue.”1(II.vi) In the manuscript Philip Wakem is branded “queer and unked.”1(V.v) “Queer” used here means “a state of strangeness and…
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Four short literary incisions (Or how I began to write things that did not let me sleep)
Catalina FlorescuStaten Island, New York, United States In memoriam, to mom and dad [Episode One: On Life and Even More Life] Carla hasn’t said a word since last Friday when her younger sister, Elvira, stopped talking. Elvira has been lying in bed, eyes almost shut all the time. If Elvira is in pain, few people…