Tactile Poetics

It is the first sustained study to explore the relationship between touching and writing in contemporary literature. For centuries, writers have explored the intimate links between the page and the skin, between the hand and writing, and between language and the caress. It is only in recent decades, however, that touch has become the subject of scholarship. And yet despite the current surge of interest in the surface of our bodies, the precise relationship between touching and writing remains neglected. Drawing on new debates in deconstruction and psychoanalysis, this book provides an original and timely intervention in the field, investigating the different ways that literary texts make contact with or 'touch' their readers. Examining touch in relation to a range of contemporary works, the book poses four main questions: In what ways is a text like a skin? How do literary texts play out both the limits and possibilities of contact? What is the role of the hand in writing? And how do advancements in digital and haptic technologies change the way we think about writing and touching? Proposes a new theory of 'tactile poetics' to conceptualise the relationship between touching and writing; 8 chapters exploring literary touch in the work of often neglected contemporary thinkers and writers; introduces the work of psychoanalyst Didier Anzieu to new audiences through its theorisation of the 'textual skin'; the first full length monograph examining literature and touch since the translation into English of seminal works on touch by thinkers of deconstruction such as Jacques Derrida and Jean Luc Nancy.