Tuberculosis and the Victorian Literary Imagination

This book examines representations of tuberculosis in Victorian fiction, giving insights into how society viewed this disease and its sufferers.

List of contents

Introduction; 1. Nineteenth-century medical discourse on pulmonary phthisis; 2. Consuming the family economy: disease and capitalism in Charles Dickens's Dombey and Son and Elizabeth Gaskell's North and South; 3. The consumptive diathesis and the Victorian invalid in Mrs Humphry Ward's Eleanor; 4. 'There is beauty in woman's decay': the rise of the tubercular aesthetic; 5. Consumption and the Count: the pathological origins of Vampirism and Bram Stoker's Dracula; 6. 'A kind of intellectual advantage': phthisis and masculine identity in Henry James's The Portrait of a Lady; Conclusion; Appendix A. Phthisis mortality; Appendix B. Medical publications on consumption; Appendix C. Gender distribution of phthisis.

About the author

Katherine Byrne is Lecturer in English at the University of Ulster.

Summary

This study examines representations of tuberculosis in Victorian fiction, analyzing consumptive characters for insights into how society viewed this 'dread disease' and its sufferers, and revealing the myths which surrounded this socially significant illness. It displays, also, how popular assumptions were used as diagnostic tools by a frustrated medical profession.

Product details

• Authors: Katherine Byrne, Katherine (University of Ulster) Byrne
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press ELT
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 21.11.2013
• EAN: 9781107672802
• ISBN: 978-1-107-67280-2
• No. of pages: 242
• Series: Cambridge Studies in Nineteent
• Subjects: Fiction > Poetry, drama; Humanities, art, music > Linguistics and literary studies > English linguistics / literary studies; Natural sciences, medicine, IT, technology > Medicine > General