230228 Illness, Medicine, and Literature (S) (WiSe 2004/2005)

Anatole Broyard, a renowned literary critic with The New York Times who died of cancer, wrote, "illness is a kind of incoherence," and Susan Sontag speaks of illness as "the night-side of life, a more onerous citizenship." In this seminar, we will explore what is involved in being ill and engage with the realms to which illness brings 'incoherence': body and mind, self and society. We begin our exploration with an introductory reading of key texts on illness, medicine, culture and literature, such as Susan Sontag's Illness as Metaphor and Arthur W. Frank's The Wounded Storyteller. We then engage with a selection of literary texts which represent the experience of illness and the cultural positioning of medicine. By looking at excerpts, for example from Jonathan Franzen's The Corrections, and selected poems and short stories, we will examine the cultural place literature gives to illness and medicine. Our main interest is in a possible affinity of literary means of representation with the field of illness. To conclude we read Michael Ignatieff's Scar Tissue, a novel which will enable us to get a comprehensive perspective on the relationship between writing, medicine, and illness.

Texts

• A reader for you to copy will be available in the library as of 14 September 2004. The file will include required preparatory reading for the seminar.
• Michael Ignatieff, Scar Tissue, 1993

Required Preparatory Reading
Please read the respective texts in the file in the library.