Literature and Medicine in Nineteenth-Century Britain: From Mary Shelley to George Eliot

ISBN-13: 9780521843348 / Angielski / Twarda / 2004 / 220 str.

Janis McLarren Caldwell

Opis

Janis Caldwell investigates the links between the growing scientific materialism of the nineteenth century and the persistence of the Romantic literary imagination. Through closely analyzing literary texts from Frankenstein to Middlemarch, and examining fiction alongside biomedical lectures, textbooks and articles, Caldwell argues that the way "Romantic materialism" influenced these disciplines compels us to revise conventional accounts of the relationship between literature and medicine.

Recenzje

Review of the hardback: '… it contains some useful work on an impressive array of primary sources. The influence of medicine and medical theory on Romantic and Victorian writers remains insufficiently acknowledged. Janis McLarren Caldwell restores that influence to its rightful place.' The Times Literary Supplement

Spis treści

Acknowledgements; 1. Introduction: Romantic materialism; 2. Science and sympathy in Frankenstein; 3. Natural supernaturalism in Thomas Carlyle and Richard Owen; 4. Wuthering Heights and domestic medicine: the child's body and the book; 5. Literalization in the novels of Charlotte Brontë; 6. Charles Darwin and Romantic medicine; 7. Middlemarch and the medical case report: the patient's narrative and the physical exam; Notes; Bibliography; Index.