Illness and Literature in the Low Countries

From the Middle Ages until the 21st Century

Jaap Grave, Rick Honings, Bettina Noak, Jaap Grave, Rick Honings, Bettina Noak

• Publisher: V&R Unipress
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9783847105206
• eBook ISBN: 9783847005209
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literary Criticism History & Theory
• Index: Literature

From as early as classical antiquity there has been an interplay between literature and medicine. The first book of Homer's Ilias recounts the plague that swept the camp of the Achaeans. While this instance concerns a full-length book, it is the aphorism that is of greater importance as a literary technique for the dissemination of medical knowledge, from the "Corpus Hippocraticum" of antiquity until the "Aphorismi de cognoscendis et curandis morbis" (1715) by Herman Boerhaave. In addition, the subject of illness and its impact on mankind was explored by great numbers of poetic scholars and scholarly poets.This collection offers fourteen articles which all highlight the relation between disease and literature. It entails a first-ever overview of Dutch-language research in this field, whereby the literary and cultural functions of medical knowledge and the poetics of medical and literary writing are in the focus.

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Copyright
• Table of Contents
• Body
• Acknowledgements
• Rick Honings and Bettina Noak: Introduction
• Gerard Bouwmeester and Mark G. van Vledder: Medical Actors and Actions in Non-Medical Middle Dutch Literature
• Hans de Waardt: Melancholy and Fantasy: Johan Wier's Use of a Medical Concept in his Plea for Tolerance
• Olga van Marion: Lovesickness on Stage: Besotted Patients in 17th-Century Medical Handbooks and Plays
• Bettina Noak: Pictures of Melancholia in Four Tragedies by Joost van den Vondel
• Ronny Spaans: Diagnosing the Poetic Inspiration: Medical Criticism of Enthusiasm in the Poetry of Jan Six van Chandelier (1620–1695)
• Helmer Helmers: Illness as Metaphor: The Sick Body Politic and Its Cures
• Rick Honings and Steven Honings: The Poet as Patient: The Curious Case of Willem Bilderdijk: A Retrospective Approach
• Arnold Lubbers: Oddities, or Illness and Health as Topics in the Early 19th-Century Dutch Readers' Digest
• Mary Kemperink: ˋAm I not Punished Enough?' Confessions of Homosexuals in Medical Studies Around 1900
• Frans-Willem Korsten: Poet-Judge-Physician: Literature as Cicatrix. The Case of Maria Dermoût
• Sander Bax: The Legacy of Incomprehensibility: Trauma, Experience and Historiography in Harry Mulisch's Historical Novel The Stone Bridal Bed
• Wouter Schrover: Reading Literature through Medical Sociology: The Doctor-Patient Relationship in Thomas Rosenboom's Public Works and a Poem by Neeltje Maria Min
• Liesbeth Minnaard and Joost Haan: The Shaking Palsy in the Low Countries: Representations of Parkinsons Disease in Dutch and Flemish Prose
• Stephan Besser: Mixing Repertoires: Cerebral Subjects in Contemporary Dutch Neurological Fiction
• List of Illustrations
• Notes on the Contributors