The Dean Disordered
eBook - ePub

The Dean Disordered

Jonathan Swift and Humoral Medicine

  1. English
  2. ePUB (mobile friendly)
  3. Available on iOS & Android
eBook - ePub

The Dean Disordered

Jonathan Swift and Humoral Medicine

About this book

Understanding Jonathan Swift’s medical and literary life

The Dean Disordered bridges biography and literary criticism to examine the chronic afflictions suffered by the great Irish satirist Jonathan Swift, investigating not only how these ailments affected his day-to-day social life and ambitions but also how he represented them in his correspondence and imaginative writings. By historicizing Swift’s medical issues, Paul William Child returns the creator of the iconic character of Gulliver (a surgeon, notably) to the humoral body that he knew. Child situates Swift’s complaints within the theory of illness as an imbalance of fluid humors that had persisted since classical days, considering how Swift tried to make sense of and contain his own humors through narrative explanation, medical interventions and regimen, performances in the “sick role,” and imaginative representations. Rather than accepting modern diagnoses of Swift’s illnesses, The Dean Disordered reconstructs the medical culture of his time. The book opens a window into Swift’s experience of illness and prompts us to read both the man and his works anew.

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Yes, you can access The Dean Disordered by Paul William Child in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in Medizin & Sozialwissenschaftliche Biographien. We have over one million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.

Table of contents

  1. Cover
  2. Title Page
  3. Copyright Page
  4. Dedication
  5. Contents
  6. Preface
  7. Acknowledgments
  8. 1. Taking Swift Back
  9. 2. Stories of Illness and Retrospective Diagnosis
  10. 3. As Swift Would Have It
  11. 4. Help for the Humoral Body: Doctors and Friends
  12. 5. Disciplining the Humoral Body: Swift’s Regimen
  13. 6. The Disordered Social Body and Humoral Identity
  14. 7. Swift in the Sick Role
  15. 8. Gulliver’s Travels and Swift’s Travails
  16. 9. Gulliver’s Ordeals as Swift’s Order
  17. 10. Voyages Out and Voyages Back: Navigating Madness
  18. Conclusion
  19. Appendix: Prescriptions for Swift from John Arbuthnot
  20. Notes
  21. Bibliography
  22. Index