Disease and Death in Eighteenth-Century Literature and Culture
Fashioning the Unfashionable
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Beschreibung
This collection examines different aspects of attitudes towards disease and death in writing of the long eighteenth century. Taking three conditions as examples – ennui, sexual diseases and infectious diseases – as well as death itself, contributors explore the ways in which writing of the period placed them within a borderland between fashionability and unfashionability, relating them to current social fashions and trends.
These essays also look at ways in which diseases were fashioned into bearing cultural, moral, religious and even political meaning. Works of literature are used as evidence, but also medical writings, personal correspondence and diaries. Diseases or conditions subject to scrutiny include syphilis, male impotence, plague, smallpox and consumption. Death, finally, is looked at both in terms of writers constructing meanings within death and of the fashioning of posthumous reputation.
Contributes to the growing body of work in Medical Humanities Brings together contributions from a range of experts in the field of literature, science and medicine Looks at medical writings, personal correspondence and diaries as well as literature
Autor*in
Allan Ingram
Themen in »Disease and Death in Eighteenth-Century Literature and Culture«
Fashion Ennui Syphilis Impotence Plague Smallpox Consumption Suicide Reputation Medicine culture death eighteenth century English literature essay
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“Disease and Death has the welcoming feel of a book designed to open new areas of enquiry and invite further research; one can only hope such interests will prove infectious.” (Noelle Dückmann Gallagher, Eighteenth-Century Fiction, Vol. 33 (1), 2020)
“This collection of essays proves the continued fruitfulness of exploring the intersections of medicine and literature in eighteenth-century British society, by viewing disease from the perspective of what is ‘fashionable’ and ‘unfashionable’. … Disease and Death in Eighteenth-Century Literature and Culture traces the intertwined social and narrative shifts in attitude towards these diseases over the long eighteenth century.” (Margaret S. Yoon, The Review of English Studies, April, 2018)
“Based on the findings of their Leverhulme Trust-funded ‘Fashionable Diseases’ research project, the editors of and contributors to Disease and Death in Eighteenth-Century Literature and Culture explore the fascinating intersections of health and medicine, literature, and modish culture. … Ingram and Dickson’s edited collection is an astute and convincing work that sheds much-needed light on the cultural medicalisation processes that populate the pages of eighteenth-century literature.” (Abigail Boucher, The British Society for Literature and Science, bsls.ac.uk, July, 2017)
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