How do books dazzle, disgust, or delight audiences? What entices readers to track charactersâ trials and tribulations? Why do stories echo across the ages with their intensity? Books with vibrant, somatic elements prompt us to identify with protagonists who fall in love, flee from pursuers, and fight for survival, enhancing the awareness of our own bodies. This transatlantic, diachronic study of 19th-century literature analyzes the rising complexity of sensorimotor descriptions in four major Victorian novels: Anne Brontëâs The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, Charlotte Brontëâs Villette, Henry Jamesâs The Portrait of a Lady, and Thomas Hardyâs Tess of the dâUrbervilles. Based on phenomenological insights of French philosophers Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Paul RicÅur, this groundbreaking research on visceral reading experiences in British and U.S. American fiction illuminates the immersive appeal of bodily motions and sensations in books, film adaptions, and digital resources of the 21st century.
