1
University of Aberdeen
Centre for Medical Humanities
School of Language & Literature
Course Guide, 2013-14
ME33LM: LITERATURE AND MEDICINE
15 credits: 6 weeks
Course convenor: Dr Catherine Jones
Taylor, B09 Tel. (27)3759
Email: c.a.jones@abdn.ac.uk
Office hours: Mondays 1.30-2.30
Thursdays 1.30-2.30
Class Times:
Mondays 9-11 in Taylor Building, C19
King’s College campus
NOTE: This course guide must be read in conjunction with the following
booklets: Guide to Honours and Level 3 Studies; Good Writing Guide;
Guidance on Avoiding Plagiarism. These are available from the Office of
the School of Language & Literature and on the English Department
website at:
http://www.abdn.ac.uk/english/resources
You must familiarise yourself with this important information at the
earliest opportunity.
2
COURSE DESCRIPTION
Challenging conventional boundaries between the humanities and the
sciences, this course explores the relationship between literature and
medicine, and asks what kind of ground the two disciplines might share and
how they might enrich one another. Focusing on selected texts from the
eighteenth century to the present day, we will consider the following topics:
the use and abuse of literary concepts in medical practice and of medical
ideas and history in literature; literary representations of the physician; the
role of narrative in medical ethics; illness narratives as life writing and fiction;
historical and literary views of diseases and epidemics; and the representation
of psychiatry and psychiatric theory in literature.
SET BOOKS (compulsory purchase)
Jane Austen, Sense and Sensibility (Penguin)
Leo Tolstoy, The Death of Ivan Ilyich (Penguin)
Anton Chekhov, Ward No. 6 and Other Stories (Penguin)
F. Scott Fitzgerald, Tender is the Night (Penguin)
Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar (Faber and Faber)
John Diamond, C: Because Cowards Get Cancer Too (Vermilion)
Daniel Defoe, A Journal of the Plague Year (Oxford World’s Classics)
Jose Saramago, Blindness (Harvill Press)
Pat Barker, Regeneration (Penguin)
SEMINAR PROGRAMME
Set Reading
* Indicates that the text or extracts from the text will be included in the course
booklet (available from the School Office).
Week 7: Introduction [Monday 11 November]
* Samuel Johnson, Rasselas (1759), ch. 44
* William Buchan, Domestic Medicine (1769), part 2, ‘Of Diseases’
Jane Austen, Sense and Sensibility (1811)
Required secondary reading:
* Michael Neve, ‘Medicine and Literature’, in Companion Encyclopaedia of the
History of Medicine, ed. W. F. Bynam and Roy Porter (1993)
* Brian Hurwitz and Paul Dakin, ‘Welcome Developments in UK Medical
Humanities’, Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, 102 (2009), 84-5
Week 8: The Representation of the Doctor [Monday 18 November]
Leo Tolstoy, The Death of Ivan Ilyich (1886)
Chekhov, ‘Ward No. 6’ (1892)
3
Week 9: Literature and Medical Ethics [Monday 25 November]
* William Carlos Williams, ‘Old Doc Rivers’ and ‘The Use of Force’, from The
Doctor Stories (1932)
F. Scott Fitzgerald, Tender is the Night (1934)
Required secondary reading:
* Tony Hope, Medical Ethics: A Very Short Introduction (2004), ch. 1
* Giskin Day, ‘Medical Classics: Tender is the Night by F Scott Fitzgerald’, in
BMJ (2007)
Week 10: Illness Narratives [Monday 2 December]
Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar (1963)
John Diamond, C: Because Cowards Get Cancer Too (1998)
* Laura Rothenberg, ‘My So-Called Lungs’, in Stories of Illness and Healing:
Women Write Their Bodies, eds Sayantani DasGupta and Marsha Hurst
(2007)
Required secondary reading:
* A. W. Frank, The Wounded Storyteller: Body, Illness and Ethics (1995), ch.
3 (‘Illness as a Call for Stories’)
* Alan Beveridge, ‘The Benefits of Reading Literature’, in Mindreadings:
Literature and Psychiatry, ed. Femi Oyebode (2009)
Week 11: Plague Writing [Monday 9 December]
Daniel Defoe, A Journal of the Plague Year (1722)
José Saramago, Blindness (1995)
Week 12: Literature and Psychiatry [Monday 16 December]
* W.H.R. Rivers, ‘An Address on the Repression of War Experience’, The
Lancet, 2 February 1918, 173-83
Pat Barker, Regeneration (1991)
* Selected poems by Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen
Required secondary reading:
* Katherine G. Nickerson and Steven Shea, ‘W. H. R. Rivers: Portrait of a
Great Physician in Pat Barker’s Regeneration Trilogy’, The Lancet, 350, issue
9072, 19 July 1997, 205-09
A LIST OF FURTHER RECOMMENDED READING CAN BE FOUND AT
THE END OF THIS COURSE GUIDE
4
COURSE INFORMATION
1. Course aims
The aims of the course are:
 to give an overview of the field of ‘literature and medicine’, in particular
current debates about the role of literature in medical education;
 to explore connections between literature and medicine through the study
of selected works from the eighteenth to the twenty-first century;
 to explore and evaluate the clinical applications of literature and medicine,
in particular the theory and practice of ‘narrative medicine’;
 to pursue an approach to literary criticism that is historically informed and
attentive to textual detail;
 to enhance reflective capacity and powers of written and oral expression
and argument.
2. Course objectives
By the end of the course you should have acquired:
 knowledge and understanding of the links between literature and medicine
from the eighteenth century to the present;
 knowledge and understanding of current debates in the field of literature
and medicine;
 an ability to read and appreciate a selection of literary and medical texts,
and interpret them against their historical background;
 an ability to engage in independent research in the field of literature and
medicine;
 enhanced self-awareness and reflective capacity, and enhanced skills of
critical analysis, argumentation, oral presentation and essay writing.
3. Teaching arrangements
ME33LM Literature and Medicine is a 15-credit course taught over six weeks.
The class meets once a week for a seminar on Monday from 9 to 11am.
Students are expected to read carefully all the set texts for each week, and to
do any preparatory tasks set by your tutor.
4. Attendance
Attendance at each meeting of the course is compulsory, and a register will
be taken in seminars. Please note that students who miss more than 10% of
the compulsory attendance or who fail to submit an assessed piece of work
will be at risk of losing their class certificate. If students lose their class
certificate they will have failed the SSC and will be unable to graduate.
5. Assessment
Assessment is by essay (2500 words) (80%) and oral presentation (20%).
6. Essay
A list of essay topics is included in this guide. The essay should be 2500
words long, including quotations and footnotes. Students will be penalised for
work that is either too long or too short. You are expected to adhere in the
5
essay to the conventions of reference as set out in the Good Writing Guide.
The essay should be submitted to the Office of the School of Language &
Literature by 12 noon on Thursday 19 December (Week 12).
Further information about criteria for marking, penalties for lateness, medical
extensions etc. are contained in the Guide to Honours and Level 3 Studies.
Please pay particular attention to the rules on plagiarism, explained in more
detail in the booklet Guidance on Avoiding Plagiarism. These documents
can be downloaded from the English Department website at
http://www.abdn.ac.uk/english/resources/
Please note that if students on the SSC submit assessed work more than a
week late without good cause or medical certificate, then CAS 9 is the
maximum grade that can be achieved.
7. Oral Presentation
The oral presentation will take the form of a 10 minute contribution to one of
the Monday seminars. NB: This is worth 20% of the marks. The
presentation is meant to provide a clear, lively and informative account of the
topic you have researched, using audio-visual aids if appropriate. The
presentation should be accompanied with an abstract and a bibliography of
the main information sources you have used. These should be handed to
your tutor and distributed to the class at the time of your presentation
otherwise a mark will be deducted from your total.
8. Absence from Classes on Medical Grounds
Candidates who wish to establish that their academic performance has been
adversely affected by their health are required to secure medical certificates
relating to the relevant periods of ill health (see General Regulation 17.3). The
University’s policy on requiring certification for absence on medical grounds or
other good cause can be accessed at the following address:
www.abdn.ac.uk/registry/quality/appendix7x5.pdf
You are strongly advised to make yourself fully aware of your responsibilities
if you are absent due to illness or other good cause. In particular, you are
asked to note that self-certification of absence for periods of absence up to
and including eleven weekdays is permissible. However, where absence has
prevented attendance at an examination or where it may have affected your
performance in an element of assessment or where you have been unable to
attend a specified teaching session, you are strongly advised to provide
medical certification (see section 3 of the Policy on Certification of Absence
for Medical Reasons or Other Good Cause).
6
PRESENTATION TOPICS
Week 8: The Representation of the Doctor
Presentation 1: ‘The Representation of Pain in The Death of Ivan Ilyich’
Presentation 2: ‘Stoic Philosophy in Chekhov’s “Ward Number Six”’
Week 9: Literature and Medical Ethics
Presentation 1: ‘Power Relations in “The Use of Force”’
Presentation 2: ‘The Impaired Physician in Fitzgerald’s Tender is the Night’
Week 10: Illness Narratives
Presentation 1: ‘Social Satire in Plath’s The Bell-Jar’
Presentation 2: ‘The Mental and Physical Sources of Selfhood in Diamond’s
C: Because Cowards Get Cancer Too’
Week 11: Plague Writing
Presentation 1: ‘Language and Style in Defoe’s Journal of the Plague Year’
Presentation 2: ‘The Idea of Community in Saramago’s Blindness’
Week 12: Literature and Psychiatry
Presentation 1: ‘Barker’s Portrait of the Psychiatrist W. H. R. Rivers’
Presentation 2: ‘Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen in Barker’s
Regeneration’
7
ESSAY TOPICS
Essays must be submitted to the School Office by 12 noon on Thursday 19
December. You should submit one copy via turnitin on myaberdeen and one
hard copy to the School Office. Essays should be 2500 words long, including
quotations and footnotes; students should note that they will be penalised for
work which is either too long or too short.
1. Compare the representation of mental disorder in at least TWO of the texts
studied on this course.
2. Compare the representation of the doctor AND / OR the doctor-patient
relationship in at least TWO of the texts studied on this course.
3. Explore the uses of literary narratives to study ethical issues in medicine.
Your answer should focus on at least TWO of the texts studied on this course.
4. To what extent does the personal illness narrative give insight into the
reality of the patient world? Your answer should focus on at least TWO of the
texts studied on this course.
5. Examine the role of memory in personal illness narratives. Your answer
should focus on at least TWO of the texts studied on this course.
6. Explore the idea of community in plague narratives. Your answer should
focus on at least TWO of the texts studied on this course.
7. What might psychiatry AND / OR psychoanalysis learn from literature?
Your answer should focus on at least TWO of the texts studied on this course.
8. Explore the representation of individual AND / OR collective trauma in at
least TWO of the texts studied on this course.
9. Compare the attitudes towards death and dying in at least TWO of the texts
studied on this course.
10. Explore the role of literature in medical education. Your answer should
focus on at least TWO of the texts studied on this course.
8
ADVICE ON PLANNING AND WRITING ESSAYS
1. Unpack the various issues raised by the question. Choose which ones to
concentrate on.
2. Before starting to write, make an essay plan summarising your overall
argument, highlighting the issues you want to address, and outlining the
main steps in your argument. Identify relevant sources to cite.
3. Check the plan to see that your argument answers the question, is
coherent and does not contradict itself. Are your ideas presented in the
clearest way and most effective order?
4. It may help to think of your essay as an act of persuasion in which you
make a case and support it with evidence. If necessary, raise and dispute
possible counter-arguments.
5. Write the essay question at the top of the first page, and keep the question
in mind throughout. Do not substitute your own essay title.
6. Use the opening paragraph to lay the foundations of your argument, not to
provide general background information. Include a statement of intent,
outlining the issues you will address and the methodology you will use.
7. The essay should be a piece of continuous prose. Do not use
subdivisions and subtitles unless absolutely necessary.
8. Use a style appropriate for academic writing, avoiding excessive reference
to self (‘I feel’, ‘I think’, ‘in my opinion’, etc.).
9. Comment on any passages you choose to quote. Quotations may not
speak for themselves, and what you see in them may not be what your
reader sees.
10. For the purposes of this essay, you are expected to cite at least two
secondary sources. Use critics discriminatingly, and be in an active not a
passive relation to them: assess, adjust, supplement or quarrel with their
findings.
11. Quote accurately (double-check each quotation), and follow the
conventions of citation and presentation set out in the Good Writing Guide.
12. End with a conclusion that summarises and ‘clinches’ your argument.
Don’t introduce major new ideas or texts in the final paragraph of your
essay.
13. Include a bibliography, set out as specified in the Good Writing Guide.
14. Include a final word count (which should include footnotes or endnotes).
9
RECOMMENDED FURTHER READING
The University Library has extensive holdings in the field of literature
and medicine, including critical works on many of the authors specified
for special study on this course. The following is a small selection.
Some titles are accessible electronically on ebrary via the library
catalogue. IT IS ESSENTIAL TO PLAN AHEAD WITH YOUR LIBRARY
BORROWING BECAUSE DEMAND FOR BOOKS INCREASES AS
DEADLINES APPROACH.
Websites and Journals
Literature, Arts and Medicine database, New York University:
http://litmed.med.nyu.edu/Main?action=new
Literature and Medicine – an interdisciplinary journal devoted to exploring
connections between literary and medical knowledge and understanding
Medical Humanities – a leading international journal that reflects the whole
field of medical humanities
Medical Humanities – General
Brodie, Howard, Stories of Sickness (1987)
Csordas, G. Thomas, Recovering Bodies: Illness, Disability, and Life Writing
(1997)
Davis, Lennard J., ed., The Disability Studies Reader (1997)
Downie, R. S., and Jane Macnaughton, Clinical Judgement: Evidence in
Practice (2000)
--- Bioethics and the Humanities: Attitudes and Perceptions (2007)
Evans, Martyn, and Ilora Finlay, eds., Medical Humanities (2001)
Evans, Martyn, Rolf Ahlzen, Iona Heath, and Jane Macnaughton, eds.,
Medical Humanities Companion: Volume 1: Symptom (2008)
Ahlzen, Rolf, Martyn Evans, Pekka Louhiala, and Raimo Puust, Medical
Humanities Companion: Volume 2: Diagnosis (2010)
Gilman, Sander L., Difference and Pathology: Stereotypes of Sexuality, Race
and Madness (1985)
Helman, Cecil, Culture, Health and Illness (1984)
Hunter, Kathryn Montgomery, Doctors’ Stories: The Narrative Structure of
Medical Knowledge (1991)
--- How Doctors Think: Clinical Judgment and the Practice of Medicine (2005)
History of Medicine – General
Bynum, W.F., and Roy Porter, eds., Companion Encyclopaedia of the History
of Medicine, 2 vols (1993)
Foucault, Michel, Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of
Reason (1988)
Porter, Roy, The Greatest Benefit to Mankind: A Medical History of Humanity
(1997)
--- ed., The Cambridge History of Medicine (2006)
--- Mind Forg’d Manacles: Madness and Psychiatry in England from the
Restoration to Regency (1987)
Rosenberg, Charles E. and Janet Golden, eds., Framing Disease: Studies in
Cultural History (1992)
10
Rosenberg, Charles E., Explaining Epidemics and Other Studies in the
History of Medicine (1992)
Watts, Sheldon, Epidemics and History: Disease, Power and Imperialism
(1997)
Literature and Medicine – General
Allard, James Robert, Romanticism, Medicine, and the Poet’s Body (2007)
Barker-Benfield, G. J., The Culture of Sensibility: Sex and Society in
Eighteenth-Century Britain (1992)
Caldwell, Janis McLarren, Literature and Medicine in Nineteenth-Century
Britain: from Mary Shelley to George Eliot (2004)
Cooke, Jennifer, Legacies of Plague in Literature, Theory and Film (2009)
Frank, A. W., The Wounded Storyteller: Body, Illness and Ethics (1997)
Gilman, Sander L., Disease and Representation: Images of Illness from
Madness to AIDS (1988)
Hawkins, Ann Hunsaker, Reconstructing Illness: Studies in Pathography
(1993)
Huth, Edward J., and Solomon Posen, The Doctor in Literature: Satisfaction
or Resentment, vol. 1 (2004)
Keen, Suzanne, Empathy and the Novel (2007)
Kleinmann, Arthur, The Illness Narratives: Suffering, Healing and the Human
Condition (1988)
Lawlor, Clark, Consumption and Literature: the Making of the Romantic
Disease (2006)
Morris, David B., The Culture of Pain (1991)
Otis, Laura, Membranes: Metaphors of Invasion in Nineteenth-Century
Literature, Science and Politics (1999)
Oyebode, Femi, ed., Mindreadings: Literature and Psychiatry (2009)
Posen, Solomon, The Doctor in Literature: Private Life, vol. 2 (2006)
Roberts, Marie Mulvey, and Roy Porter, eds., Literature and Medicine during
the Eighteenth Century (1993)
Rousseau, G. S., ‘Literature and Medicine: The State of the Field’, ISIS, 72
(1981), 406-24
Saunders, Corinne, Ulrika Maude, and Jane Macnaughton, eds., The Body
and the Arts (2009)
--- and Jane Macnaughton, eds., Madness and Creativity in Literature and
Culture (2004)
Scarry, Elaine, The Body in Pain: The Making and Unmaking of the World
(1988)
Showalter, Elaine, Hystories: Hysterical Epidemics and Modern Culture
(1997)
Shuttleton, David, Smallpox and the Literary Imagination 1660-1820 (2007)
Small, Helen, Love’s Madness: Medicine, the Novel, and Female Insanity,
1800-1865 (1996)
Smith, Andrew, Victorian Demons: Medicine, Masculinity, and the Gothic at
the Fin de Siècle (2004)
Snyder, Sharon L., Brenda Jo Brueggemann, and Rosemarie GarlandThomson, eds., Disability Studies: Enabling the Humanities (2002)
Sontag, Susan, Illness as Metaphor (1978)
11
Surawicz, Borys, and Beverly Jacobson, Doctors in Fiction: Lessons from
Literature (2009)
Vrettos, Athena, Somatic Fictions: Imagining Illness in Victorian Culture
(1995)
Ward, Priscilla, Contagious: Cultures, Carriers, and the Outbreak Narrative
(2008)
Wood, Jane, Passion and Pathology in Victorian Fiction (2001)
Narrative Medicine
Charon, Rita, Narrative Medicine: Honoring the Stories of Illness (2006)
--- and Martha Montello, eds., Stories Matter: The Role of Narrative in Medical
Ethics (2002)
DasGupta, Sayantani and Marsha Hurst, eds., Stories of Illness and Healing:
Women Write Their Bodies (2007)
Greenhalgh, Trisha, and Brian Hurwitz, eds., Narrative Based Medicine:
Dialogue and Discourse in Clinical Practice (1998)
Stanley, Patricia, ‘The Patient’s Voice: A Cry in Solitude or Call for
Community’, Literature and Medicine, 23 (2004), 346-63
Peterkin, Allan, and A. A. Prettyman, ‘Finding a Voice: Revisiting the History
of Therapeutic Writing’, Medical Humanities, 35 (2009), 80-88
Week 7: Introduction
Jane Austen:
Johnson, Claudia, Jane Austen: Women, Politics and the Novel (1988)
Tuite, Clara, Romantic Austen: Sexual Politics and the Literary Canon
(2002)
Wiltshire, John, Jane Austen and the Body: ‘The Picture of Health’ (2006)
Week 8: The Representation of the Doctor
Leo Tolstoy:
Orwin, Donna Tussing, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Tolstoy (2002)
Speirs, Logan, Tolstoy and Chekhov (1971)
Wilson, A. N., Tolstoy (1988)
Anton Chekhov:
Coope, John, Doctor Chekhov: A Study in Literature and Medicine (1997)
Gottlieb, Vera, and Paul Allain, eds, The Cambridge Companion to Chekhov
(2001)
Pritchett, V. S., Chekhov: A Biography (1990)
Week 9: Literature and Medical Ethics
William Carlos Williams:
Bremen, Brian A., William Carlos Williams and the Diagnostics of Culture
(1993)
Fisher-Wirth, Ann W., William Carlos Williams and Autobiography: The Woods
of His Own Nature (1989)
Gish, Robert, William Carlos Williams: A Study of the Short Fiction (1989)
12
F. Scott Fitzgerald:
Bruccoli, Matthew J., Reader’s Companion to F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Tender is
the Night (1996)
Hook, Andew, F. Scott Fitzgerald: A Literary Life (2002)
Prigozy, Ruth, ed., The Cambridge Companion to F. Scott Fitzgerald (2001)
Stern, Milton R., Critical Essays on F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Tender is the Night
(1986)
Week 10: Illness Narratives
Sylvia Plath:
Gill, Jo, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Sylvia Plath (2006)
Hughes, Ted, Birthday Letters (1998)
Kirk, Connie Ann, Sylvia Plath: A Biography (2004)
Week 11: Plague Writing
Daniel Defoe:
Flynn, Carol Houlihan, The Body in Swift and Defoe (1990)
Mayer, Robert, History and the Early English Novel: Matters of Fact from
Bacon to Defoe (1997)
Richetti, John, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Daniel Defoe (2008)
Saramago:
Ben-Moshe, Liat, ‘Infusing Disability in the Curriculum: The Case of
Saramago’s Blindness’, Disability Studies Quarterly, 26: 2 (2006)
Bolt, David, ‘Saramago’s Blindness: Humans or Animals?’ The Explicator, 66:
1 (2007)
Nashef, Hania A. M., ‘Becomings in J. M. Coetzee’s Waiting for the
Barbarians and José Saramgao’s Blindness’, Comparative Literature Studies,
47: 1 (2010)
Week 12: Literature and Psychiatry
Pat Barker:
Brannigan, John, Pat Barker (2005)
Monteith, Sharon, Pat Barker (2002)
Westman, Karin E., Pat Barker’s Regeneration: A Reader’s Guide (2001)