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Ep.45 - Syphilitic Noses In 1700s British Literature And Art

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“For by the word Nose, throughout all this long chapter of noses, and in every other part of my work, where the word Nose occurs,- - I declare, by that word I mean a Nose, and nothing more, or less.” No reader of Laurence Sterne’s wildly-popular novel Tristram Shandy (1759-67) could be in doubt that sometimes a nose is not just a nose.

In this lecture, Dr Noelle Gallagher explores the weird and wonderful cultural life of deformed noses in eighteenth-century British literature and art. Considering popular engravings and well-known literary works, Gallagher explores how the deformed nose came to function as a powerful symbol for fears about immigration, class instability and even the degeneration of the species.

Speaker: Dr Noelle Gallagher, Senior Lecturer in 18th Century British Literature, University of Manchester
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