Table of Contents

List of illustrations Preface Introduction: essentialism, agency and the exemplary hand 1. Divine complicity: God's handy worke and the anatomist's touch 2. Effectless use: dismembering and forgetting in Titus Andronicus 3. That curious engine: action at a distance in The Duchess of Malfi 4. The beast with five fingers: gothic labor relations in Victorian ghost stories 5. Involuntary confession: Pudd'nhead Wilson and law-enforcement mythology Epilogue Notes Bibliography Index.

About the Author

Katherine Rowe is Associate Professor of English at Bryn Mawr College.

Reviews

"A series of richly historicized readings which highlight multiplicity, complexity, and ironic self-questioning rather than adherence to a uniform and culturally determined version of the self." - Modern Philology "[Rowe] offers... theoretical eclecticism, meticulous research, and careful attention to texts to yield original and nuanced readings of agency in process." - Modern Philology