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Bodies That Feel and Tellers Who Report: The Corporeal Gap in 19th Century Illness Narratives

Verdi, Hayley
http://orcid.org/0009-0005-2203-3078
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=case1712833178825953

Abstract Details

, Doctor of Philosophy, Case Western Reserve University, English.
In this dissertation, I consider a range of texts from the nineteenth century including novels, personal essays, and diaries in which authors attempt to narrate experiences of illness in light of the shifting cultural perceptions of how the physical body and the concept of “self” relate to each other. The Diary of Alice James, Robert Louis Stevenson’s “Ordered South,” Harriet Martineau’s Life in the Sick-Room, and Henry James’s The Wings of the Dove are the main texts analyzed. In each of these examples, I examine the ways that authors compose texts to understand the self alongside the “nerves and fibres” of bodily lived experience. Of primary interest to this dissertation is considering how the texts I examine can be fruitfully analyzed when concepts gleaned from the realm of medical humanities are applied to illness stories. This is a necessary intervention because much of the recent work in the broader field of medical humanities seeks to present illness narratives as artifacts of patient experiences that can be approached as acts of testimony or as evidence of therapeutic exercises. The primary concept that I rely on throughout my dissertation is the “corporeal gap” taken from the work of one of the founders of the practice of Narrative Medicine, Dr. Rita Charon. I use this concept as my way of accounting for some of the ways the texts I examine invent approaches to the difficult work of talking about how sickness disrupts the relationship between bodies and selves. The “corporeal gap,” functions as both feature and analytical tool throughout my dissertation. Primarily, I use the corporeal gap as an interpretive tool that allows me to attend to the various ways the texts I examine deal with the interruptive and disruptive experience of illness.
Kimberly Emmons (Committee Chair)
Erin Lamb (Committee Member)
Athena Vrettos (Committee Member)
Kurt Koenigsberger (Committee Member)
148 p.
British and Irish Literature; Literature; Rhetoric
corporeal gap; narrative; illness narrative; nineteenth century; focalization; Henry James; Alice James; Harriet Martineau; Robert Louis Stevenson; embodiment; illness; literature; health humanities; medical humanities

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Verdi, H. (2024). Bodies That Feel and Tellers Who Report: The Corporeal Gap in 19th Century Illness Narratives [Doctoral dissertation, Case Western Reserve University]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=case1712833178825953

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Verdi, Hayley. Bodies That Feel and Tellers Who Report: The Corporeal Gap in 19th Century Illness Narratives . 2024. Case Western Reserve University, Doctoral dissertation. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=case1712833178825953.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Verdi, Hayley. "Bodies That Feel and Tellers Who Report: The Corporeal Gap in 19th Century Illness Narratives ." Doctoral dissertation, Case Western Reserve University, 2024. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=case1712833178825953

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)

case1712833178825953
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© 2024, all rights reserved.
This open access ETD is published by Case Western Reserve University School of Graduate Studies and OhioLINK.