This open access book presents five different approaches to reading
breath in literature, in response to texts from a range of historical,
geographical and cultural environments. Breath, for all its ubiquity in
literary texts, has received little attention as a transhistorical
literary device. Drawing together scholars of Medieval Romance, Early
Modern Drama, Fin de Siècle Aesthetics, American Poetics and the
Postcolonial Novel, this book offers the first transhistorical study of
breath in literature. At the same time, it shows how the study of breath
in literature can contribute to recent developments in the Medical
Humanities.