The Resource Vital signs : medical realism in nineteenth-century fiction, Lawrence Rothfield
Vital signs : medical realism in nineteenth-century fiction, Lawrence Rothfield
Resource Information
The item Vital signs : medical realism in nineteenth-century fiction, Lawrence Rothfield represents a specific, individual, material embodiment of a distinct intellectual or artistic creation found in University of Missouri-St. Louis Libraries.This item is available to borrow from 1 library branch.
Resource Information
The item Vital signs : medical realism in nineteenth-century fiction, Lawrence Rothfield represents a specific, individual, material embodiment of a distinct intellectual or artistic creation found in University of Missouri-St. Louis Libraries.
This item is available to borrow from 1 library branch.
- Summary
- Vital Signs offers both a compelling reinterpretation of the nineteenth-century novel and a methodological challenge to literary historians. Rejecting theories that equate realism with representation, Lawrence Rothfield argues that literary history forms a subset of the history of discourses and their attendant practices. He shows in particular how clinical medicine provided Balzac, Flaubert, Eliot, and others with narrative strategies, epistemological assumptions, and models of professional authority, and he traces the linkages between medicine's eventual decline in scientific and social status and realism's displacement by naturalism, detective fiction, and modernism. Rothfield first demonstrates, in discussions of Balzac's The Country Doctor and Flaubert's Madame Bovary, that the nature of the connection between medicine and realism varies with the purpose and period of each author, even where realists unabashedly appropriate the clinical viewpoint. In Eliot's Middlemarch, however, a crisis of medical authority--provoked by emerging alternative scientific conceptions of the body and by medicine's loss of charismatic appeal as it consolidates into a profession--makes the connection between medicine and realism increasingly difficult to maintain. Zola and Conan Doyle respond by subordinating the clinical viewpoint to others in their "pararealistic" fiction, while modernists negate medicine's basic presuppositions about the body, truth, and professional authority. Pathology, Rothfield concludes, constitutes a category of social differentiation equivalent to race, class, or gender; it generates a politics of knowledge irreducible to either "policing power" or Marxist totalizing
- Language
- eng
- Extent
- xvii, 235 pages
- Contents
-
- Medicine and Mimesis: The Contours of a Configuration
- Disarticulating Madame Bovary: Flaubert and the Medicalization of the Real
- Paradigms and Professionalism: Balzacian Realism in Discursive Context
- "A New Organ of Knowledge": Medical Organicism and the Limits of Realism in Middlemarch
- On the Realism/Naturalism Distinction: Some Archaeological Considerations
- From Diagnosis to Deduction: Sherlock Holmes and the Perversion of Realism
- The Pathological Perspective: Clinical Realism's Decline and the Emergence of Modernist Counter-Discourse
- Epilogue: Toward a New Historicist Methodology
- Isbn
- 9780691068961
- Label
- Vital signs : medical realism in nineteenth-century fiction
- Title
- Vital signs
- Title remainder
- medical realism in nineteenth-century fiction
- Statement of responsibility
- Lawrence Rothfield
- Subject
-
- Comparative literature -- French and English
- Criticism, interpretation, etc
- English fiction -- 19th century -- History and criticism
- French fiction -- 19th century -- History and criticism
- History
- Literature and medicine -- France -- History -- 19th century
- Literature and medicine -- Great Britain -- History -- 19th century
- Medical fiction -- History and criticism
- Medicine in Literature
- Medicine in literature
- Physicians in literature
- Realism in literature
- Comparative literature -- English and French
- Language
- eng
- Summary
- Vital Signs offers both a compelling reinterpretation of the nineteenth-century novel and a methodological challenge to literary historians. Rejecting theories that equate realism with representation, Lawrence Rothfield argues that literary history forms a subset of the history of discourses and their attendant practices. He shows in particular how clinical medicine provided Balzac, Flaubert, Eliot, and others with narrative strategies, epistemological assumptions, and models of professional authority, and he traces the linkages between medicine's eventual decline in scientific and social status and realism's displacement by naturalism, detective fiction, and modernism. Rothfield first demonstrates, in discussions of Balzac's The Country Doctor and Flaubert's Madame Bovary, that the nature of the connection between medicine and realism varies with the purpose and period of each author, even where realists unabashedly appropriate the clinical viewpoint. In Eliot's Middlemarch, however, a crisis of medical authority--provoked by emerging alternative scientific conceptions of the body and by medicine's loss of charismatic appeal as it consolidates into a profession--makes the connection between medicine and realism increasingly difficult to maintain. Zola and Conan Doyle respond by subordinating the clinical viewpoint to others in their "pararealistic" fiction, while modernists negate medicine's basic presuppositions about the body, truth, and professional authority. Pathology, Rothfield concludes, constitutes a category of social differentiation equivalent to race, class, or gender; it generates a politics of knowledge irreducible to either "policing power" or Marxist totalizing
- Cataloging source
- DLC
- http://library.link/vocab/creatorDate
- 1956-
- http://library.link/vocab/creatorName
- Rothfield, Lawrence
- Index
- index present
- Literary form
- non fiction
- Nature of contents
- bibliography
- Series statement
- Literature in history
- http://library.link/vocab/subjectName
-
- English fiction
- Medicine in literature
- French fiction
- Literature and medicine
- Literature and medicine
- Comparative literature
- Comparative literature
- Medical fiction
- Physicians in literature
- Realism in literature
- Medicine in Literature
- Label
- Vital signs : medical realism in nineteenth-century fiction, Lawrence Rothfield
- Bibliography note
- Includes bibliographical references (pages [193]-226) and index
- Carrier category
- volume
- Carrier category code
-
- nc
- Carrier MARC source
- rdacarrier
- Content category
- text
- Content type code
-
- txt
- Content type MARC source
- rdacontent
- Contents
-
- Medicine and Mimesis: The Contours of a Configuration
- Disarticulating Madame Bovary: Flaubert and the Medicalization of the Real
- Paradigms and Professionalism: Balzacian Realism in Discursive Context
- "A New Organ of Knowledge": Medical Organicism and the Limits of Realism in Middlemarch
- On the Realism/Naturalism Distinction: Some Archaeological Considerations
- From Diagnosis to Deduction: Sherlock Holmes and the Perversion of Realism
- The Pathological Perspective: Clinical Realism's Decline and the Emergence of Modernist Counter-Discourse
- Epilogue: Toward a New Historicist Methodology
- Control code
- 24215672
- Dimensions
- 25 cm
- Extent
- xvii, 235 pages
- Isbn
- 9780691068961
- Lccn
- 91029831
- Media category
- unmediated
- Media MARC source
- rdamedia
- Media type code
-
- n
- System control number
- (WaOLN)1431910
- Label
- Vital signs : medical realism in nineteenth-century fiction, Lawrence Rothfield
- Bibliography note
- Includes bibliographical references (pages [193]-226) and index
- Carrier category
- volume
- Carrier category code
-
- nc
- Carrier MARC source
- rdacarrier
- Content category
- text
- Content type code
-
- txt
- Content type MARC source
- rdacontent
- Contents
-
- Medicine and Mimesis: The Contours of a Configuration
- Disarticulating Madame Bovary: Flaubert and the Medicalization of the Real
- Paradigms and Professionalism: Balzacian Realism in Discursive Context
- "A New Organ of Knowledge": Medical Organicism and the Limits of Realism in Middlemarch
- On the Realism/Naturalism Distinction: Some Archaeological Considerations
- From Diagnosis to Deduction: Sherlock Holmes and the Perversion of Realism
- The Pathological Perspective: Clinical Realism's Decline and the Emergence of Modernist Counter-Discourse
- Epilogue: Toward a New Historicist Methodology
- Control code
- 24215672
- Dimensions
- 25 cm
- Extent
- xvii, 235 pages
- Isbn
- 9780691068961
- Lccn
- 91029831
- Media category
- unmediated
- Media MARC source
- rdamedia
- Media type code
-
- n
- System control number
- (WaOLN)1431910
Subject
- Comparative literature -- French and English
- Criticism, interpretation, etc
- English fiction -- 19th century -- History and criticism
- French fiction -- 19th century -- History and criticism
- History
- Literature and medicine -- France -- History -- 19th century
- Literature and medicine -- Great Britain -- History -- 19th century
- Medical fiction -- History and criticism
- Medicine in Literature
- Medicine in literature
- Physicians in literature
- Realism in literature
- Comparative literature -- English and French
Genre
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<div class="citation" vocab="http://schema.org/"><i class="fa fa-external-link-square fa-fw"></i> Data from <span resource="http://link.umsl.edu/portal/Vital-signs--medical-realism-in/UnEokgPqB7M/" typeof="Book http://bibfra.me/vocab/lite/Item"><span property="name http://bibfra.me/vocab/lite/label"><a href="http://link.umsl.edu/portal/Vital-signs--medical-realism-in/UnEokgPqB7M/">Vital signs : medical realism in nineteenth-century fiction, Lawrence Rothfield</a></span> - <span property="potentialAction" typeOf="OrganizeAction"><span property="agent" typeof="LibrarySystem http://library.link/vocab/LibrarySystem" resource="http://link.umsl.edu/"><span property="name http://bibfra.me/vocab/lite/label"><a property="url" href="http://link.umsl.edu/">University of Missouri-St. Louis Libraries</a></span></span></span></span></div>
