Literature and medicine in nineteenth century Britain : from Mary Shelley to George Eliot

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 Brontes 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.

Record details

ISBN: 9780511331664
ISBN: 0511331665
ISBN: 9781107163607
ISBN: 1107163609
ISBN: 0521066670
ISBN: 9780521066679
ISBN: 9780511264757
ISBN: 0511264755
ISBN: 0521843340
ISBN: 9780521843348
ISBN: 9781280750182
ISBN: 1280750189
ISBN: 0511484747
ISBN: 9780511484742
ISBN: 9780511265457
ISBN: 051126545X
ISBN: 9780511263927
ISBN: 0511263929
ISBN: 0511266170
ISBN: 9780511266171
Physical Description: 1 online resource (xi, 201 pages)
remote
Publisher: Cambridge, U.K. ; New York : Cambridge University Press, 2004.

Content descriptions

Bibliography, etc. Note:	Includes bibliographical references and index.
Formatted Contents Note:	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.
Restrictions on Access Note:	NLC staff and students only.
Language Note:	English.
Source of Description Note:	Print version record.