This Companion offers the first systematic analysis of the body in literature, from the Middle Ages to the present day.

1. Medieval somatics Bill Burgwinkle; 2. Disability Jonathan Hsy; 3. Staging early modern embodiment David Hillman; 4. Eating, obesity and literature Maud Ellmann; 5. The body and language Andrew Bennett; 6. The maternal body Clare Hanson; 7. Literary sexualities Heike Bauer; 8. The body, pain, and violence Peter Fifield; 9. The ageing body Elizabeth Barry; 10. Representing dead and dying bodies Sander Gilman; 11. The racialized body David Marriott; 12. Literature, technology and the senses Steven Connor; 13. Literature and neurology Ulrika Maude; 14. Psychoanalytic bodies Josh Cohen; 15. The body and affect Jean-Michael Rabaté; 16. Posthuman bodies Paul Sheehan.