The Brontës and the Idea of the Human

What does it mean to be human? The Bront novels and poetry are fascinated by what lies at the core - and limits - of the human. The Bronts and the Idea of the Human presents a significant re-evaluation of how Charlotte Emily and Anne Bront each responded to scientific legal political theological literary and cultural concerns in ways that redraw the boundaries of the human for the nineteenth century. Proposing innovative modes of approach for the twenty-first century leading scholars shed light on the relationship between the role of the imagination and new definitions of the human subject. This important interdisciplinary study scrutinises the notion of the embodied human and moves beyond it to explore the force and potential of the mental and imaginative powers for constructions of selfhood community spirituality degradation cruelty and ethical behaviour in the nineteenth century and its fictional worlds.