Exploring medical writing in England in the 100+ years after the advent of the “Great Mortality”, this book examines the storytelling practices of poets, patients, and physicians in the midst of a medieval public health crisis and demonstrates how literary narratives enable us to see a kinship between poetry and the healing arts. Looking at how we can learn to diagnose a text as if we were diagnosing a body, Salisbury provides new insights into how we can recuperate the voices of those afflicted by illness in medieval texts when we have no direct testimony.
She considers how we interpret stories told by patients in narratives mediated by others, ways that women factor into the shaping of a medical canon, how medical writing intersects with religious belief and memorial practices governed by the Church, and ways that regimens of health benefit a population in the throes of an epidemic.
By:
Eve Salisbury
Imprint: Bloomsbury Academic
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions:
Height: 234mm,
Width: 156mm,
Spine: 25mm
Weight: 454g
ISBN: 9781350249837
ISBN 10: 1350249831
Pages: 240
Publication Date: 21 March 2024
Audience:
College/higher education
,
Primary
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active
Acknowledgments List of Illustrations List of Abbreviations Introduction The Making of a Medical Discourse Narrative Medicine and Medical Humanities Microcosmic Bodies Chapter Overview Chapter 1 Honoring the Stories of Illness in Chaucer Physician, Heal Thyself Charting “Pestilence” The Wounded Child Diagnosing the Summoner and the Friar Diagnosing the Pardoner: “This” Pestilence Wounded Knight / Wounded Storyteller Medicinal Barnyard Medicinal Gardens and the Hortus Conclusus Toward a Healing Philosophy Chapter 2 Therapeutic Dialogue and Intersubjective Medicine in Gower and Langland Pestilence and Penitence Confession and the Seven Deadly Sins Medical Consciousness and the Psychophysiological Body Practitioner and Priest Reading the Cardiocentric Body: Langland Reading the Cardiocentric Body: Gower Gower’s “Physique” and the “Parfit Practisour” Health in an Unhealthy World: Langland Health in an Unhealthy World: Gower Diagnosing the Storyteller’s Illness Chapter 3 Lydgate and Hoccleve: Dietetic Medicine and the Medicalization of Madness “A Doctrine and Diet for the Pestilence” “How the Plague was Ceased in Rome” “Fabula Duorum Mercatorum” Death and its Dance Death and the Physician: A Dialogue Lydgate Meets Hoccleve Virtually Knock, Knock, Who’s There? Learning to Die Fables from the Gesta Romanorum Reading the Fables Allegorically Go Little Book, Go! Chapter 4 Inscribing Medicine: Thornton Household Remedies John of Burgundy’s De Epidemia and Thornton’s “Medcynes for the Pestilence” From Pestilence to Wounds From the Literal to the Literary: Wounding Reading for Dis-ease The Healing Power of Blood Fever Toothache Childbirth Narrating Medicine in Thornton Household Recipes Chapter 5 Women Healers, Life Writing, and Therapeutic Reading Women Healers and Communal Medicine Pestilence and Household Healing Chronicling the Pestilence Passion to Compassion Heart and Soul Therapeutic Reading for Women Medicine for Dis-ease Therapeutic Reading and the Vertu of Women’s Healing Two Virtuous Women of Romance Bad Medicine: The Vilification of Women Healers Narrating Medicine for Women Chapter 6 Afterword: A Prognosis Illness Narratives vs. Plague Narratives Looking Back Looking Ahead Bibliography
Eve Salisbury is Professor of English, Emerita, at Western Michigan University, USA. She has edited four volumes for the Middle English Texts Series, authored numerous essays on medieval marriage and institutionally sanctioned violence and written a monograph on the representation of the child in the work of Geoffrey Chaucer (Chaucer and the Child). She is the co-founder of The Gower Project, co-editor of Accessus: A Journal of Premodern Literature and New Media, consulting editor of Comparative Drama, and member of Phi Beta Kappa.
Reviews for Narrating Medicine in Middle English Poetry: Poets, Practitioners, and the Plague
A lively tour through late medieval English texts on medicine and embodiment, one that reminds us how inextricable healing and narration were and continue to be. * Social History of Medicine *
