Hannah Jane Thompson (born 1973)[1] is a British academic and professor of French and critical disability studies at Royal Holloway, University of London.
Her first book Naturalism Redressed (2004) explores the relationship between costume and identity construction in the Rougon-Macquart novels by Emile Zola.
"[9] Her second book, Taboo: Corporeal Secrets in Nineteenth-Century France (2013), extends her scope to include works by George Sand, Rachilde, Octave Mirbeau, Jules Barbey d'Aurevilly, Guy de Maupassant and Victor Hugo, as well as Emile Zola's late novels.
[10] A review in the Forum for Modern Language Studies explains the book's premise: "In spite of their frank depictions of the human form, Realist and Naturalist writers held clear anxieties with regard to certain prohibited and illicit subjects that complicated the supposed transparency of their work.
From unruly erotic desire and sexual violence to bodily breakdown and masculine weakness, taboo bodies, however, served a key purpose by further energizing the tension in the Realist enterprise between what could and what could not be represented.