This volume explores a web of complex relationships between body and mind, discussing the efforts of individuals from a wide variety of backgrounds to define, to achieve, or to reject the “normal”; and, in some cases, to put something else in its place. After considering the problems arising from other people’s perceptions of non-standard bodies, the book turns to gender: is it written “upon the body”, established at birth, determined only by physical traits and distinguished by material things such as clothes; or is it written “within the body”, defined through the subject’s own feelings? It considers what happens when “males” consider themselves “female”, and “females” consider themselves “male”.It concludes with the analysis of four books, by different authors with different sexual orientations. Two of these volumes might be considered “genuine autobiographies”, while the other two are novels which include numerous autobiographical features that reflect the authors’ own thoughts.
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This essay is mainly based on my earliest work which is a combination of literary criticism with sociology and history of science. I started writing it while I was studying for my Master of Arts , “The Body and Representation”, at the University of Reading some years ago, and just in the last two years I decided to update it due to the increasing “modernity” of those issues. I guess that originally it was the work of a young poet becoming a man and a young man becoming a poet. Therefore, I think it is full of all the enthusiastic illusions and limitations typical of that age. I wish to thank Carolyn Williams Lyle, who was both a lovely teacher and friend to me at this important stage of my life. I also wish to thank the University of Reading for all the support they gave me in different ways. Last but not least, I wish to thank the University of Salerno, which supported my studies financially.
