TY - JOUR
T1 - The Visceral Novel Reader and Novelized Medicine in Georgian Britain
AU - Class, Monika
PY - 2016/1/1
Y1 - 2016/1/1
N2 - The article introduces "the visceral novel reader" as a diachronic, context-sensitive mode of novelistic reception, in which fact and fiction overlap cognitively: the mental rehearsal of the activity of seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, and touching while reading novels and, vice versa, the mental rehearsal of novels in the act of perceiving the real world. Located at the intersection of literature, medicine and science, "the visceral novel reader" enhances our understanding of the role that novels played in the dialectic construction of erudition in English. In Georgian Britain, reading practices became a testing ground for the professionalization of physicians, natural philosophers, and men of letters. While it was in the professionals' common interest to implement protocols that taught readers to separate body from mind, and fact from fiction, novels came to stand for "debased" (visceral) reading. Novels inverted these notions by means of medicalization (regimentation, somatization, and individuation) and contributed to the professional stratification of medicine and literature.
AB - The article introduces "the visceral novel reader" as a diachronic, context-sensitive mode of novelistic reception, in which fact and fiction overlap cognitively: the mental rehearsal of the activity of seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, and touching while reading novels and, vice versa, the mental rehearsal of novels in the act of perceiving the real world. Located at the intersection of literature, medicine and science, "the visceral novel reader" enhances our understanding of the role that novels played in the dialectic construction of erudition in English. In Georgian Britain, reading practices became a testing ground for the professionalization of physicians, natural philosophers, and men of letters. While it was in the professionals' common interest to implement protocols that taught readers to separate body from mind, and fact from fiction, novels came to stand for "debased" (visceral) reading. Novels inverted these notions by means of medicalization (regimentation, somatization, and individuation) and contributed to the professional stratification of medicine and literature.
KW - Delusions/history
KW - Fantasy
KW - Female
KW - History, 15th Century
KW - History, 16th Century
KW - History, 18th Century
KW - History, 19th Century
KW - Humans
KW - Imagination
KW - Literature, Modern
KW - Male
KW - Medicine in Literature
KW - Reading
KW - Reality Testing
KW - Somatoform Disorders/history
KW - United Kingdom
U2 - 10.1353/lm.2016.0017
DO - 10.1353/lm.2016.0017
M3 - Article
C2 - 28569722
SN - 0278-9671
VL - 34
SP - 341
EP - 369
JO - Literature and medicine
JF - Literature and medicine
IS - 2
ER -