Undergraduate Course: Medicine in Literature 1: Illness Narratives through History (ENLI10355)
Course Outline
| School | School of Literatures, Languages and Cultures |
College | College of Humanities and Social Science |
| Credit level (Normal year taken) | SCQF Level 10 (Year 3 Undergraduate) |
Availability | Available to all students |
| SCQF Credits | 20 |
ECTS Credits | 10 |
| Summary | This course aims to develop the student¿s understanding of the history of medicine and its influence on literature through the ages; of the relationship between this development and other discourses of embodiment; of the emergence of various illness narratives; of the relationship between these and various major historical discoveries, developments and events.
The course will achieve these aims by reading poems, plays and novels from antiquity to the present day, alongside various non-fiction sources. This course is, however, not merely a historical overview. It will allow students to examine the ways in which discourses of embodiment and the view of the sick body change according to shifting political, social and cultural contexts.
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| Course description |
1. Introduction: Historicising Medicine in Fiction: Extract from Thomas Laqueur, Making Sex (1990); extract from Roy Porter, The Greatest Benefit to Mankind (1997)
2. Galenic Medicine, Potency and Madness in Ancient drama: Euripides, Herakles (c. 416 BC); Sophocles, Oedipus Rex (c. 429 BC); extract from Galen, On the Usefulness of the Parts of the Body (c. 200 AD)
3. Plagues, madness and love sickness: Geoffrey Chaucer, Troilus and Criseyde (c. 1380); Robert Henryson, The Testament of Cresseid (c. 1480)
4. The Four Humours, Illness and Early Modern Drama: Ben Johnson, The Alchemist (c. 1610); William Shakespeare, The Tempest (c. 1611); extract from Robert Burton, The Anatomy of Melancholy (1621)
5. Poetry, Passion, and Consumption: Selection of poetry from John Keats and Percy Bysshe Shelley; Susan Sontag, Illness as Metaphor (1978)
6. Nursing, the Sick Room and Sacrifice: Elizabeth Gaskell, Ruth (1853); Harriet Martineau, Life in the Sickroom (1844)
7. War Torn Bodies and the Health Institution: Selection of poetry from Siegfried Sassoon, Wilfred Owen and Rupert Brooke.
8. ESSAY WRITING WEEK
9. Identities in Sickness: Michael Cunningham, The Hours (1998); Virginia Woolf, Mrs Dalloway (1925); On Being Ill (1930)
10. Madness and Literature: Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar (1963); Sarah Kane, 4.48 Psychosis (2000)
11. Illness as Art: Jean Dominique Bauby, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (1997); extract from Bob Flanagan, Sick (1997)
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Information for Visiting Students
| Pre-requisites | A MINIMUM of 4 college/university level literature courses at grade B or above (should include no more than one introductory level literature course). Related courses such as civilisation or other interdisciplinary classes, Freshman Year Seminars or composition/creative writing classes/workshops are not considered for admission to this course. Applicants should also note that, as with other popular courses, meeting the minimum does NOT guarantee admission. In making admissions decisions preference will be given to students who achieve above the minimum requirement with the typical visiting student admitted to this course having 4 literature classes at grade A.
** as numbers are limited, visiting students should contact the Visiting Student Office directly for admission to this course ** |
| High Demand Course? |
Yes |
Course Delivery Information
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| Academic year 2015/16, Available to all students (SV1)
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Quota: 15 |
| Course Start |
Semester 1 |
Timetable |
Timetable |
| Learning and Teaching activities (Further Info) |
Total Hours:
200
(
Seminar/Tutorial Hours 20,
Programme Level Learning and Teaching Hours 4,
Directed Learning and Independent Learning Hours
176 )
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| Assessment (Further Info) |
Written Exam
60 %,
Coursework
30 %,
Practical Exam
10 %
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| Additional Information (Assessment) |
One coursework essay of 2,500 words (30%).
One practical assessment (10%).
Final assessment will consist of an examination essay of 3,000 words for both intercalated BA students and English Literature students (60%).
Visiting Student (Semester 1 only) Assessment
1 essay of 2,500 words (30%);
1 practical assessment (10%);
1 exam essay of 3,000 words (60%) |
| Feedback |
Not entered |
| No Exam Information |
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| Academic year 2015/16, Part-year visiting students only (VV1)
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Quota: 6 |
| Course Start |
Semester 1 |
Timetable |
Timetable |
| Learning and Teaching activities (Further Info) |
Total Hours:
200
(
Seminar/Tutorial Hours 20,
Programme Level Learning and Teaching Hours 4,
Directed Learning and Independent Learning Hours
176 )
|
| Assessment (Further Info) |
Written Exam
75 %,
Coursework
25 %,
Practical Exam
0 %
|
| Additional Information (Assessment) |
One coursework essay of 2,500 words (30%).
One practical assessment (10%).
Final assessment will consist of an examination essay of 3,000 words for both intercalated BA students and English Literature students (60%).
Visiting Student (Semester 1 only) Assessment
1 essay of 2,500 words (30%);
1 practical assessment (10%);
1 exam essay of 3,000 words (60%) |
| Feedback |
Not entered |
| No Exam Information |
Learning Outcomes
| In addition to the skills training common to all English Literature Honours courses (essay-writing, independent reading, group discussion, oral presentation, small-group autonomous learning), students will acquire a broad understanding of the way in which literary forms have been the vehicles through which our understanding of illness has been articulated.
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Reading List
Thomas Laqueur, Making Sex (1990)
Howard Brody, Stories of Sickness (2003)
Frederick F. Cartwright, Disease and History (1972)
Rita Charon, Narrative Medicine: Honoring the Stories of Illness (2008)
Yasmin Gunaratnam and David Oliviere, Narrative and Stories in Healthcare: Illness, Dying, and Bereavement (2009)
A. F. Kleinman, The Illness Narratives: Suffering, Healing, and the Human Condition (1988)
Jeffrey Meyers, Disease and the Novel, 1880-1960 (1985)
Roy Porter, Bodies Politic: Disease, Death and Doctors in Britain, 1650-1900 (2001)
Carole Rawcliffe, Leprosy in Medieval England (2009)
Tory Vandeventer, Women and Disability in Medieval Literature (2011)
Jonathan Gil Harris, Sick Economies: Drama, Mercantilism and Disease in Shakespeare's England (2003)
Gail Kern Paster, Humouring the Body: Emotions and the Shakespearean Stage (2004)
Rebecca Totaro, Suffering in Paradise: The Bubonic Plague in English Literature from More to Milton (2005)
Alan Bewell, Romanticism and Colonial Disease (1999)
Katharine Byrne, Tuberculosis and the Victorian Literary Imagination (2011)
Athena Vrettos, Somatic Fictions: Imagining Illness in Victorian Culture (1995)
Diana Berry and Campbell Mackenzie (eds.), The Legacy of War: Poetry, Prose, Painting and Physic (1995)
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Contacts
| Course organiser | Dr Katherine Inglis
Tel: (0131 6)50 3617
Email: |
Course secretary | Mrs Anne Mason
Tel: (0131 6)50 3618
Email: |
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