초록 열기/닫기 버튼
This essay observes, first of all, the way in which filth and pollution in modern realist fiction constitutes a negative slant of imagination in which daily commerce and activities spell out metaphorically and literally a degenerative process of human life mired in contagion or moral depravity. It is in forestalling such a negative process that the modern novel, on the other hand, mirrors an extending network of sanitary or disciplinary services as the narrative frame in depicting modern life. In dealing with this interventionary view of the novel, the essay also examines how the image of filth and abjection is deployed in a way that echoes medical or administrative theories and technologies of sanitary reform. For instance, Dickens’ use of filth as an index to cultural empathy to be circulated and exchanged in the city offers an intriguing parallel to Chadwick’s administrative vision of urban sanitation. This parallel is important, since it alludes to the site of everyday life as the frontier of representation in which signs of abjection or contamination signal conflicting paths of storytelling. The essay tries to explore these conflicting accounts of filth by dealing with a selection of novels by Flaubert, Defoe, and Dickens.
