Lucy Bending
- Published in print:
- 2000
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198187172
- eISBN:
- 9780191674648
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198187172.003.0004
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century and Victorian Literature
It has become a commonplace that pain defies language and, as such, that it is unique as a sensation that cannot be described or shared: sufferers ...
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It has become a commonplace that pain defies language and, as such, that it is unique as a sensation that cannot be described or shared: sufferers suffer alone, unable to translate their physical pains into words. This chapter looks into the arguments of those who promote this line of reasoning, most notably Virginia Woolf and Elaine Scarry, and refutes their claims both theoretically and by arguing from the rhetorical strategies of Victorian writers. The flaw in such arguments is that their proponents refuse to accept that pain can enter into language and be accommodated by its structures — whether descriptive or metaphorical — in the face of a paucity of directly expressive words for painful sensations. In response, the chapter schematizes the conventional attitudes towards physical pain, outside the realms of medicine and Christianity, that were open to the Victorian sufferer and writer.Less
It has become a commonplace that pain defies language and, as such, that it is unique as a sensation that cannot be described or shared: sufferers suffer alone, unable to translate their physical pains into words. This chapter looks into the arguments of those who promote this line of reasoning, most notably Virginia Woolf and Elaine Scarry, and refutes their claims both theoretically and by arguing from the rhetorical strategies of Victorian writers. The flaw in such arguments is that their proponents refuse to accept that pain can enter into language and be accommodated by its structures — whether descriptive or metaphorical — in the face of a paucity of directly expressive words for painful sensations. In response, the chapter schematizes the conventional attitudes towards physical pain, outside the realms of medicine and Christianity, that were open to the Victorian sufferer and writer.
Jonathan Sawday
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- January 2018
- ISBN:
- 9781784995164
- eISBN:
- 9781526128249
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9781784995164.003.0005
- Subject:
- History, Social History
In this chapter, Jonathan Sawday looks at some examples of the representation of pain on the renaissance stage, concentrating on the language which is deployed to reproduce the sensation of both ...
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In this chapter, Jonathan Sawday looks at some examples of the representation of pain on the renaissance stage, concentrating on the language which is deployed to reproduce the sensation of both physical and mental pain. Using Shakespeare’s King Lear as his source text, Sawday looks at the way in which eighteenth-century commentators (chiefly Dr Johnson) responded to the play’s ‘painfulness’. Sawday argues that, rather than seeing Johnson’s response as ‘excessive,’ it faithfully rehearses a theory of pain derived (in part) from Locke. Sawday goes on to examine the nature of ‘word-induced’ pain which has become a feature of modern cognitive studies of pain, and which might suggest that Johnson’s reaction to the play may, in fact, have some somatic basis. He concludes by suggesting the possibility that 16th- and 17th-century rehearsals of pain via the medium of metaphoric and devotional language may also have a somatic basis, and one which, with the arrival of new technologies for understanding the location and nature of pain, we are only just beginning to (re-)discover.Less
In this chapter, Jonathan Sawday looks at some examples of the representation of pain on the renaissance stage, concentrating on the language which is deployed to reproduce the sensation of both physical and mental pain. Using Shakespeare’s King Lear as his source text, Sawday looks at the way in which eighteenth-century commentators (chiefly Dr Johnson) responded to the play’s ‘painfulness’. Sawday argues that, rather than seeing Johnson’s response as ‘excessive,’ it faithfully rehearses a theory of pain derived (in part) from Locke. Sawday goes on to examine the nature of ‘word-induced’ pain which has become a feature of modern cognitive studies of pain, and which might suggest that Johnson’s reaction to the play may, in fact, have some somatic basis. He concludes by suggesting the possibility that 16th- and 17th-century rehearsals of pain via the medium of metaphoric and devotional language may also have a somatic basis, and one which, with the arrival of new technologies for understanding the location and nature of pain, we are only just beginning to (re-)discover.
