Literature and medicine in nineteenth-century Britain : from Mary Shelley to George Eliot / Janis McLarren Caldwell.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Caldwell, Janis McLarren, author.

Series:

Cambridge studies in nineteenth-century literature and culture ; 46.

Cambridge studies in nineteenth-century literature and culture ; 46

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

English literature--19th century--History and criticism.

English literature.

Medicine in literature.

Literature and medicine--Great Britain--History--19th century.

Literature and medicine.

Women and literature--Great Britain--History--19th century.

Women and literature.

English fiction--Women authors--History and criticism.

English fiction.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (xi, 201 pages) : digital, PDF file(s).

Other Title:

Literature & Medicine in Nineteenth-Century Britain

Place of Publication:

Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 2004.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

Although we have come to regard 'clinical' and 'romantic' as oppositional terms, romantic literature and clinical medicine were fed by the same cultural configurations. In the pre-Darwinian nineteenth century, writers and doctors developed an interpretive method that negotiated between literary and scientific knowledge of the natural world. Literary writers produced potent myths that juxtaposed the natural and the supernatural, often disturbing the conventional dualist hierarchy of spirit over flesh. Clinicians developed the two-part history and physical examination, weighing the patient's narrative against the evidence of the body. Examining fiction by Mary Shelley, Carlyle, the Brontës and George Eliot, alongside biomedical lectures, textbooks and articles, Janis McLarren Caldwell demonstrates the similar ways of reading employed by nineteenth-century doctors and imaginative writers and reveals the complexities and creative exchanges of the relationship between literature and medicine.

Contents:

Introduction: Romantic materialism

Science and sympathy in Frankenstein

Natural supernaturalism in Thomas Carlyle and Richard Owen

Wuthering heights and domestic medicine: the child's body and the book

Literalization in the novels of Charlotte Bronte

Charles Darwin and Romantic medicine

Middlemarch and the medical case.

Notes:

Title from publisher's bibliographic system (viewed on 05 Oct 2015).

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

1-107-16360-9

1-280-75018-9

0-511-26545-X

0-511-26392-9

0-511-26617-0

0-511-33166-5

0-511-48474-7

0-511-26475-5

OCLC:

476030738