PhD Candidate at King's College London working on a pragmatic reading of Roland Barthes. Interested in reading and loneliness/ togetherness. Working with affect studies and cognitive literary theory. Supervisors: Patrick ffrench
Delivered as part of the 2019 Cultural Literacy in Europe Conference on the theme of 'Cosmopolita... more Delivered as part of the 2019 Cultural Literacy in Europe Conference on the theme of 'Cosmopolitan Conviviality'.
This paper explores the experience of reading about food in Barthes’s text on Japan, as well as e... more This paper explores the experience of reading about food in Barthes’s text on Japan, as well as elsewhere in his oeuvre, in order to ask whether the affective engagement reading about food creates can constitute a kind of being-together with Barthes, and each other, as mediated his texts. By recourse to research from cognitive literary studies, it argues that reading about food reminds us of our own embodiment, and brings a great deal of pleasure to the reading experience. In relation to wider questions of community raised by Barthes’s work, it argues for the strength of this being-together between Barthes and his readers, and therefore introduces a new consideration into the process of reading Barthes whereby the reader is on her own, but no longer alone.
This paper, completed as the final Dissertation for the University of Oxford MSt in 2017, argues ... more This paper, completed as the final Dissertation for the University of Oxford MSt in 2017, argues for a reading of Barthes's L'Empire des signes as a kind of handbook for how to read and live differently.
This paper explores the different understandings of the word 'ethical' in relation to works by Ma... more This paper explores the different understandings of the word 'ethical' in relation to works by Martha Nussbaum, Derek Attridge, and (perhaps most surprisingly) to Rick Rylance's 2016 'Literature and the Public Good'.
This paper explores the narrative of sensuality and the body provided by the bronze reductions of... more This paper explores the narrative of sensuality and the body provided by the bronze reductions of Jean-Antoine Houdon's 'Le Baiser donné' and 'Le Baiser rendu', exhibited in the Wallace Collection, London.
Interweaving personal experience, discussion of contemporary sexual ethics, and a meditation on B... more Interweaving personal experience, discussion of contemporary sexual ethics, and a meditation on Barthes’ Fragments, Sophie Eager considers the potential and limits of a touch which is indirect, mediated via an object, as a species of what Barthes calls le non-vouloir-saisir (not-wanting-to-seize). Addressing many of the motifs of these modes of contact in the Fragments, Eager extends this to discussion of the dynamics of interpretative violence, and resistance to such violence, in the intertextual networks that surround the Fragments, ultimately considering the Barthesian practice of reading as a practice of not-wanting-to-seize, preserving the freedom of the other.
Delivered as part of the 2019 Cultural Literacy in Europe Conference on the theme of 'Cosmopolita... more Delivered as part of the 2019 Cultural Literacy in Europe Conference on the theme of 'Cosmopolitan Conviviality'.
This paper explores the experience of reading about food in Barthes’s text on Japan, as well as e... more This paper explores the experience of reading about food in Barthes’s text on Japan, as well as elsewhere in his oeuvre, in order to ask whether the affective engagement reading about food creates can constitute a kind of being-together with Barthes, and each other, as mediated his texts. By recourse to research from cognitive literary studies, it argues that reading about food reminds us of our own embodiment, and brings a great deal of pleasure to the reading experience. In relation to wider questions of community raised by Barthes’s work, it argues for the strength of this being-together between Barthes and his readers, and therefore introduces a new consideration into the process of reading Barthes whereby the reader is on her own, but no longer alone.
This paper, completed as the final Dissertation for the University of Oxford MSt in 2017, argues ... more This paper, completed as the final Dissertation for the University of Oxford MSt in 2017, argues for a reading of Barthes's L'Empire des signes as a kind of handbook for how to read and live differently.
This paper explores the different understandings of the word 'ethical' in relation to works by Ma... more This paper explores the different understandings of the word 'ethical' in relation to works by Martha Nussbaum, Derek Attridge, and (perhaps most surprisingly) to Rick Rylance's 2016 'Literature and the Public Good'.
This paper explores the narrative of sensuality and the body provided by the bronze reductions of... more This paper explores the narrative of sensuality and the body provided by the bronze reductions of Jean-Antoine Houdon's 'Le Baiser donné' and 'Le Baiser rendu', exhibited in the Wallace Collection, London.
Interweaving personal experience, discussion of contemporary sexual ethics, and a meditation on B... more Interweaving personal experience, discussion of contemporary sexual ethics, and a meditation on Barthes’ Fragments, Sophie Eager considers the potential and limits of a touch which is indirect, mediated via an object, as a species of what Barthes calls le non-vouloir-saisir (not-wanting-to-seize). Addressing many of the motifs of these modes of contact in the Fragments, Eager extends this to discussion of the dynamics of interpretative violence, and resistance to such violence, in the intertextual networks that surround the Fragments, ultimately considering the Barthesian practice of reading as a practice of not-wanting-to-seize, preserving the freedom of the other.
Uploads