Overview
- Reveals fresh perspectives on current central concerns in the medical humanities, such as the subjective experience of illness, narrative medicine, the medicinal gaze, and the doctor-patient relationship
- Examines how literature and medicine engage with fear from medieval to modern times, and the responses evoked in these contexts
- Looks at the narrative nature and impact of fear in literature, history, and culture
Part of the book series: Palgrave Studies in Literature, Science and Medicine (PLSM)
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About this book
This book is about an emotion constantly present in human culture and history: fear. It is also a book about literature and medicine, two areas of human endeavour that engage with fear most acutely. The essays in this volume explore fear in various literary and medical manifestations, in the Western World, from medieval to modern times. It is divided into two parts. The first part, Treating Fear, examines fear in medical history, and draws from theology, medicine, philosophy, and psychology, to offer an account of how fear shifts in Western understanding from the Middle Ages to Modern times. The second part, Writing Fear, explores fear as a rhetorical and literary force, offering an account of how it is used and evoked in distinct literary periods and texts. This coherent and fascinating collection will appeal to medical historians, literary critics, cultural theorists, medical humanities’ scholars and historians of the emotions.
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Keywords
Table of contents (12 chapters)
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Front Matter
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Treating Fear: Medicine, Illness, Therapy
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Front Matter
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Writing Fear: Rhetoric, Passion, Literature
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Front Matter
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Back Matter
Reviews
“This is an inquiry into fear as both a psychological and physical condition to be dealt with in medicine … . This is a set of contributions that will be of interest to a wide audience, from writers and artists to practitioners … . This study is different, starting with its double approach: medicine and the arts.” (Alain Touwaide, Doody's Book Reviews, August, 2018)
Editors and Affiliations
About the editors
Daniel B. McCann is the Simon and June Li Fellow in Old and Middle English at Oxford University’s Lincoln College.
Claire McKechnie-Mason is a management officer at NHS Cardiff.
Bibliographic Information
Book Title: Fear in the Medical and Literary Imagination, Medieval to Modern
Book Subtitle: Dreadful Passions
Editors: Daniel McCann, Claire McKechnie-Mason
Series Title: Palgrave Studies in Literature, Science and Medicine
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-55948-7
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan London
eBook Packages: Literature, Cultural and Media Studies, Literature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)
Copyright Information: The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2018
Hardcover ISBN: 978-1-137-55947-0Published: 04 June 2018
eBook ISBN: 978-1-137-55948-7Published: 19 May 2018
Series ISSN: 2634-6435
Series E-ISSN: 2634-6443
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: XI, 261