Module Identifier ENM1820  
Module Title LITERATURE AND MEDICINE IN THE 18TH CENTURY  
Academic Year 2001/2002  
Co-ordinator Dr David Shuttleton  
Semester Available semesters 1 and 2  
Pre-Requisite good honours degree  
Co-Requisite ENM0120 and ENM0220 plus three other MA option modules  
Course delivery Seminars / Tutorials   5 x 2 hours  
Assessment Essay   1 x 5,000 words    
  Resit assessment   1 x 5,000 words    

Brief description


This MA option enables students with no prior knowledge of the subject an opportunity to engage with the lively specialist inter-disciplinary field of 18th century studies. Literature and medicine have traditional associations: Apollo was the god of poets and healing. Next to sermons, popular medical texts dominated the rapid expansion of print culture in a period when the roles of the physician, philosopher and creative writer often overlapped. Recent work has been informed by a concern with mentalites and the theoretical projects of post-structuralism and New Historicism which encourage readings of medico-philosophical texts, case studies and popular medical culture as not merely 'background' material, but as worthy of detailed rhetorical analysis alongside conventional, canonical 'literature'. We shall be drawing upon this recent work to make critical readings of poetry, fiction, popular medical advice books, diaries, philosophical tracts etc. Attention will also be drawn to medical iconography in related popular print culture.

Reading Lists

Books
** Recommended Text
Anthology. (2000) Eighteenth-Century Literature and Medicine. Blackwell
Brian Turner. (1990) The Body and Society. revised. Sage
Susan Sontag. Illness as Metaphor. Penguin
** Supplementary Text
N. Cousins. (1982) The Physician in Literature. Philadelphia
I. Jordanova. (1986) Languages of Nature: Critical Essays on Science and Literature.
Lester M King. (1985) The Medical World of the Eighteenth-Century. Chicago
Lester M King. (1978) The Philosophy of Medicine. Harvard
Richard Gordon. (1993) The Literary Companion to Medicine: An Anthology of Prose and Poetry. Sinclair-Stevenson
Doroth Porter and Roy Porter. (1989) Patient's Progress: Doctors and Doctoring in the Eighteenth-Century. Oxford: Clarendon
Roy Porter (ed.). (1995) Medicine in the Enlightenment. Amsterdam: Rodolphi
Roy Porter. (1997) The Greatest Benefit to Mankind. Harper Collins
Marie Mulvey Roberts and Roy Porter (eds.). (1993) Literature and Medicine During the Eighteenth-Century. Routledge
G.S. Rousseau. (1991) Enlightenment Crossings: Pre- and Post-Modern Discourses: Medical, Scientific. Manchester University Press
Roger Lonsdale (ed.). The New Oxford Book of Eighteenth-Century Verse. Oxford University Press
Roger Lonsdale (ed.). Eighteenth-Century Women Poets.
All Poets. (1995) The Chadwyck-Healey on-line Poetry Database. Chadwyck Healey
Tobias Smollett. The Expedition of Humphry Clinker. Penguin
Daniel Defoe. Tour Through the Whole Island of Great Britain. Penguin
R. Demaria (ed.). British Literature 1640-1789: An Anthology. Blackwell