Illness and Literature in the Low Countries (eBook)

From the Middle Ages until the 21st Century

Jaap Grave, Rick Honings, Bettina Noak (Autoren)

Jaap Grave, Rick Honings, Bettina Noak (Herausgeber)

eBook Download: PDF

2015 | 1. Auflage
278 Seiten
Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht Unipress (Verlag)
978-3-8470-0520-9 (ISBN)

Infos

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.

Dr. Jaap Grave war Dozent für Niederländische Literatur in Leipzig und Berlin sowie für Niederlandistik (Dutch Studies) in Nagasaki. Zur Zeit unterrichtet er Moderne Niederländische Literatur an der Universität Münster.

Inhalt

Title Page 3
Copyright 4
Table of Contents 5
Body 7
Acknowledgements 7
Rick Honings and Bettina Noak: Introduction 9
Three research domains 10
1. 11
2. 11
3. 12
Content of this collection 12
1. 13
2. 14
3. 16
Gerard Bouwmeester and Mark G. van Vledder: Medical Actors and Actions in Non-Medical Middle Dutch Literature 19
Methodology 20
Results 21
Discussion 22
1 Medicine and astrology 22
2 Find yourself a proper doctor 23
3 Medicine as labour 24
4 Doctors as moneygrubbers 25
5 The doctor and non-medical ethics 25
6 Playing doctor 28
7 (Ab).use of the doctors reputation 29
8 There is nothing more we can do 30
9 Conclusions and General Discussion 31
Hans de Waardt: Melancholy and Fantasy: Johan Wier's Use of a Medical Concept in his Plea for Tolerance 33
1 Introduction 33
2 Fantasy and the brain 34
3 Demonic possession 36
4 Natural magic and fantasy 39
5 Medicine, rhetoric, and history writing 40
6 Demonic possession and other diabolically provoked afflictions 42
Olga van Marion: Lovesickness on Stage: Besotted Patients in 17th-Century Medical Handbooks and Plays 47
1 Introduction 47
2 Love symptoms 48
3 Patients on the Dutch stage 49
4 Symptoms in female characters 53
5 Lovesickness in a historical character 55
6 Lovesickness and the means to be cured of it 59
Bettina Noak: Pictures of Melancholia in Four Tragedies by Joost van den Vondel 61
1 Introduction 61
2 Melancholia in the Early Modern Period 64
3 Melancholia in Johan van Beverwijck 66
4 Melancholia under Tyrants – Conscience 68
5 Religious Mania and the Insanity of the People – Incorporation 71
6 The Tears of St. Peter – Ego Impoverishment 74
7 Maria Stuart – Numbness and Breakthrough 77
8 Conclusion 79
Ronny Spaans: Diagnosing the Poetic Inspiration: Medical Criticism of Enthusiasm in the Poetry of Jan Six van Chandelier (1620–1695) 81
1 Introduction 81
2 `Ecstasy' 83
3 Ecstasy as a danger to physical health 88
4 The healthy, Christian ecstasy 90
5 Defectiveness as evidence of humanness 95
Helmer Helmers: Illness as Metaphor: The Sick Body Politic and Its Cures 97
1 Introduction 97
2 The body in crisis 99
3 The xenobiotic other 107
4 The Princely Healer 110
5 Print as disease and medicine 115
6 Conclusion 120
Rick Honings and Steven Honings: The Poet as Patient: The Curious Case of Willem Bilderdijk: A Retrospective Approach 121
1 Myth and the melancholy man 121
2 A Retrospective Approach 125
3 A Child Prodigy with Headaches 127
4 An Aggression Issue 130
5 Lifelong Suffering 132
6 Old and Confused 135
7 Conclusion 137
Arnold Lubbers: Oddities, or Illness and Health as Topics in the Early 19th-Century Dutch Readers' Digest 139
1 Reading in book clubs 141
2 Categories 142
3 Novels 143
4 Original language 144
5 French, German and English 145
6 Recreational reading 147
7 Illness and health 148
8 Animal magnetism 148
9 Sea baths 151
10 The cowpox vaccine 153
11 Miscellaneous work on health and well being 155
12 Conclusion 158
Mary Kemperink: `Am I not Punished Enough?' Confessions of Homosexuals in Medical Studies Around 1900 159
1 Introduction 159
2 The medical discourse 160
3 The confession 163
4 Krafft-Ebing, Psychopathia sexualis (edition 1903) 165
5 Laupts, Tares et poisons (1896) 170
6 Magnus Hirschfeld, `Ursachen und Wesen des Uranismus' (1903) 175
7 Concluding 178
Frans-Willem Korsten: Poet-Judge-Physician: Literature as Cicatrix. The Case of Maria Dermoût 181
1 From scar to cicatrix 181
2 `I am modern: I am sick' 185
3 Narrative closure and the ability to judge all parties concerned 189
4 Societal healing – against mastery 192
5 Conclusion 195
Sander Bax: The Legacy of Incomprehensibility: Trauma, Experience and Historiography in Harry Mulisch's Historical Novel The Stone Bridal Bed 199
1 Introduction 199
2 Representing (historical and psychological) trauma 202
3 `Vergiss mich nicht'. Reality in The Stone Bridal Bed 208
4 Trauma and myth 214
Wouter Schrover: Reading Literature through Medical Sociology: The Doctor-Patient Relationship in Thomas Rosenboom's Public Works and a Poem by Neeltje Maria Min 217
1 Introduction 217
2 Neeltje Maria Min's untitled poem and Thomas Rosenboom's Public Works 220
3 Aesculapian power 222
4 Charismatic power 224
5 Social power 225
6 A relation of interdependency 227
7 Conclusion 228
Liesbeth Minnaard and Joost Haan: The Shaking Palsy in the Low Countries: Representations of Parkinsons Disease in Dutch and Flemish Prose 231
1 Discovering Parkinson's Disease 231
2 The Fiction of Parkinson's Disease 232
3 (Not) Accepting Parkinson's Disease 235
4 Mother, Son and Parkinson 238
5 Terminal Parkinson's Disease 240
6 Parkinson in a Soldier 243
7 Parkinson in a Girl 245
8 Hallucinating Parkinson's Disease 247
9 Conclusion 250
Stephan Besser: Mixing Repertoires: Cerebral Subjects in Contemporary Dutch Neurological Fiction 253
1 Introduction 253
2 Literature and Neuroculture 255
3 Porta Romana: A Tale of Two Traumas 260
4 De eerste hond in de ruimte: The Neurology of Techno-Capitalism 264
5 De maagd Marino: Spiritual Materialism 268
6 Concluding Remarks 271
List of Illustrations 273
Cover illustration 273
Olga van Marion, Lovesickness on Stage: Besotted Patients in 17th-Century Medical Handbooks and Plays 273
Helmer Helmers, Illness as Metaphor: The Sick Body Politic and Its Cures 273
Notes on the Contributors 275

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 9.12.2015
• Co-Autor: Sander Bax, Stephan Besser, Gerard Bouwmeester, Joost Haan, Helmer Helmers, Steven Honings, Mary Kemperink, Frans-willem Korsten, Arnold Lubbers, Olga van Marion, Liesbeth Minnaard, Wouter Schrover, Ronny Spaans, Mark G. van Vledder, Hans de Waardt
• Zusatzinfo: mit 10 Abbildungen
• Verlagsort: Göttingen
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Geisteswissenschaften ► Sprach- / Literaturwissenschaft
• Schlagworte: Deutschland /Literatur • Deutschland /Literatur, Literaturgeschichte • europäische Literatur • Gesundheit • Krankheit • Literatur • Literaturgeschichte • Medizingeschichte • Niederländische Literatur
• ISBN-10: 3-8470-0520-0 / 3847005200
• ISBN-13: 978-3-8470-0520-9 / 9783847005209