Bordering on the body : the racial matrix of modern fiction and culture / Laura Doyle.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 235-261) and index.

Of race and woman : eugenics, motherhood, and racial patriarchy -- Romanticism and the race aesthetic : Scott and Wordsworth -- Reimagining materiality after romanticism : science, phenomenology, and narrative -- Swan song for the race mother : late-romantic narrative in Cane -- The parodic purge, the maternal return : late-romantic narrative in Ulysses -- Voyaging beyond the race mother : Melymbrosia and To the lighthouse -- Burning down the house : interruptive narrative in Invisible man -- "To get to a place" : intercorporeality in Beloved.

The figure of the mother in literature and the arts has been the subject of much recent critical attention. Whereas many studies have focused on women writers and the maternal, Laura Doyle significantly broadens the field by tracing the racial logic internal to Western representations of maternality at least since Romanticism. She formulates a theory of "racial patriarchy" in which the circumscription of reproduction within racial borders engenders what she calls the "race mother" in literary and cultural narratives. Pairing literary movements not often considered together-

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