Tuberculosis and the Victorian literary imagination / Katherine Byrne.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Byrne, Katherine, 1978-

Series:

Cambridge studies in nineteenth-century literature and culture ; 74.

Cambridge studies in nineteenth-century literature and culture ; 74

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

English literature--History and criticism.

English literature.

Tuberculosis in literature.

Literature and medicine--Great Britain--History.

Literature and medicine.

Communicable diseases in literature.

Literature, Modern--history.

History.

United Kingdom.

Culture.

History, 19th Century.

Medicine in Literature.

Tuberculosis, Pulmonary--history.

Great Britain.

Medical Subjects:

Literature, Modern--history.

United Kingdom.

Culture.

History, 19th Century.

Medicine in Literature.

Tuberculosis, Pulmonary--history.

Physical Description:

viii, 223 pages ; 24 cm.

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, UK, New York :. Cambridge University Press, 2011.

Summary:

"Tuberculosis was a widespread and deadly disease which devastated the British population in the nineteenth century: consequently it also had a huge impact upon public consciousness. This text explores the representations of tuberculosis in nineteenth-century literature and culture. Fears about gender roles, degeneration, national efficiency and sexual transgression all play their part in the portrayal of 'consumption', a disease which encompassed a variety of cultural associations. Through an examination of a range of Victorian texts, from well-known and popular novels by Charles Dickens and Elizabeth Gaskell to critically neglected works by Mrs Humphry Ward and Charles Reade, this work reveals the metaphors of illness which surrounded tuberculosis and the ways those metaphors were used in the fiction of the day. The book also contains detailed analysis of the substantial body of writing by nineteenth-century physicians which exists about this disease, and examines the complex relationship between medical 'fact' and literary fiction"--Provided by publisher.

Contents:

Introduction

Nineteenth-century medical discourse on tuberculosis

Consuming the family economy: disease and capitalism in Charles Dickens's Dombey and Son and Elizabeth Gaskell's North and South

The consumptive diathesis and the Victorian invalid in Mrs Humphry Ward's Eleanor

'There is beauty in woman's decay': the rise of the tubercular aesthetic

Consumption and the Count: the pathological origins of Vampirism and Bram Stoker's Dracula

'A kind of intellectual advantage': phthisis and masculine identity in Henry James's The Portrait of a Lady

Conclusion: 'A truly modern illness: into the twentieth century and beyond

Appendix A. Phthisis mortality

Appendix B. Medical publications on consumption

Appendix C. Gender distribution of phthisis.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9780521766678

0521766672

OCLC:

658536581