Reading Literature and Chronic Pain

Dr Josie Billington (University of Liverpool, UK)

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Hardback

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English

Bloomsbury Academic
12 June 2025

This valuable and insightful study into chronic pain and its treatment advances a striking analysis of the complex phenomenon of chronic pain, also attesting to the importance of the medical humanities in addressing urgent questions that medical science alone cannot resolve.

The primary purpose of this book is twofold. First, to demonstrate empirically – against a conceptual background drawn from multiple disciplines and knowledge bases (historical, medical, neurobiological, psychological, socio/anthropological) – how an apparently ‘soft’ intervention such as literary reading can effectively combat symptoms of a condition as intractable as chronic pain. Second, to explore what this evidence tells us about pain (as a lived experience as well as a condition in urgent need of new treatment options) and about literature and the reading of fiction and poetry as therapeutic influences in contemporary health and healthcare, most particularly in alleviating the (often severe) mental health difficulties with which chronic pain is almost universally associated.

Based on unique empirical research with people who are living with chronic pain, this book is the first of its kind to demonstrate the value of literature and literary reading both as a discourse for understanding and 'finding' pain and as an intervention in its treatment.

By: Dr Josie Billington (University of Liverpool UK)
Imprint: Bloomsbury Academic
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions: Height: 234mm, Width: 156mm,
ISBN: 9781350270213
ISBN 10: 1350270210
Pages: 256
Publication Date: 12 June 2025
Audience: College/higher education , Professional and scholarly , Primary , Undergraduate
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active

Introduction: Chronic Pain, the New Epidemic Chapter One: Where is it? What is it? Chapter Two: ‘In Reading’: Chronic Pain, Literature, Therapy Chapter Three: Reading Not Talking: Pain, Trauma, Treatment Conclusion: Literature, the alternative language for pain and suffering Bibliography Index

Josie Billington is Professor in English Literature at the University of Liverpool, UK. She has edited and published extensively on Victorian women's fiction and poetry including 21st Century Oxford Authors: Elizabeth Barrett Browning, George Eliot's Scenes of Clerical Life, Elizabeth Gaskell's Wives and Daughters, and Margaret Oliphant's The Ladies Lindores. She has also led multiple inter-disciplinary studies on the value of literary reading for health. Her publications in this field include Is Literature Healthy? (Oxford University Press, 2016) and Reading and Mental Health (Palgrave, 2019).

Reviews for Reading Literature and Chronic Pain

How can something as apparently soft as reading fiction and poetry influence a condition as intractable as chronic pain? This is the guiding question of Josie Billington's remarkable Literature and Chronic Pain. Ten years in the making, what lies at its heart is a series of moving case studies that reveal how the shared reading aloud and discussion of literature can bring forms of therapeutic relief. This book should be required reading for literary scholars and physicians alike for how it helps us better understand the mind-body problem and the mystery of human experience. * Kay Young, Professor of English and Comparative Literature, University of California, Santa Barbara *