Located at the intersections of significant phases of life, the transient body is often at the same time a body in transition. With particular interest in Anglophone literatures from the eighteenth to the twenty-first centuries, the present collection explores the fragility of the body and human existence from historical, literary, and cultural perspectives. It discusses narrative, poetic, and aesthetic strategies employed to imagine and document transitions from one stage of life to another. The volume focuses on bodily rites of passage between pregnancy and birth, childhood and adulthood, and old age and death. Moreover, the contributions investigate the transcendence of corporeality with regard to medical and religious practices, disease and decay, and the struggle with ageing and a wish for longevity, as well as the challenge of social taboos.
