The language of teeth: the tooth as a physical embodiment of identity in literature

Abstract

ABSTRACTThe physical or scientific state and cultural symbolism of the tooth can be used to creatively interrogate personal and collective identities. This research seeks to foreground the tooth and progress the ways in which it is used as a physical embodiment of identity in literature, as the tooth is the often forgotten body part of literary scholarship concerning identity and the body, despite its frequent presence in literature as an exploration of identity from the Greek myth of Cadmus to contemporary creative writing. Understanding the tooth as a physical embodiment of identity is a result of interdisciplinary research into contrasting spaces: scientific evidence, cultural traditions, and the poetry of Katherine Stansfield and Paul Farley. Through the foregrounding of the tooth in these contrasting spaces, the tooth as a physical embodiment of identity becomes a multifaceted location, or heterotopia, both physically and conceptually. In my poetry the tooth's heterotopia is performed through a more explicit and experimental use of language and white space, as a physical embodiment of the tooth's identity. The language of teeth provides access to new ways of further negotiating and progressing representations of identities within the field of creative writing.