| Περίληψη: | <br/>How did doctors argue in eighteenth-century medical pamphlet wars? How literary, or clinical, is Diderot’s depiction of mad nuns? What is at stake in the account of a cataract operation at the beginning of Jean-Paul’s novel <em>Hesperus</em>? In this pioneering volume, contributors extend current research at the intersection of medicine and literature by examining the overlapping narrative strategies in the writings of both novelists and doctors. <br/> Focusing on a wide variety of sources, an interdisciplinary team of researchers explores the nature and function of narration as an underlying principle of such writing. From a reading of correspondence between doctors as a means of continuing professional education, to the use of inoculation as a plotting device, or an examination of Diderot’s physiological approach to mental illness in <em>La Religieuse</em>, contributors highlight:<br/> • how doctors exploited rhetorical techniques in both clinical writing and correspondence with patients.<br/> • how novelists incorporated medical knowledge into their narratives.<br/> • how models such as case-histories or narrative poetry were adopted and transformed in both fictional and actual medical writing.<br/> • how these narrative strategies shaped the way in which doctors, patients and illnesses were represented and perceived in the eighteenth century.<br/> <br/><br/> Sophie Vasset, Introduction: questions of narration in eighteenth-century medicine and literature<br/> I. Medical storytelling: case studies and anecdotes<br/> Alexandre Wenger, From medical case to narrative fiction: Diderot’s <em>La Religieuse</em><br/> Sophie Vasset, How to relate a medical case: the controversy about John Ranby’s <em>Narrative of the last illness of the earl of Orford</em> (1745) <br/> II. The doctor’s letters: epistolary narration<br/> Philip Rieder, Writing to fellow physicians: literary genres and medical questions in Louis Odier’s (1748-1817) correspondence<br/> David Shuttleton, ‘Not the meanest part of my works and experience’: Dr George Cheyne’s correspondence with Samuel Richardson<br/> Hélène Dachez and Sophie Vasset, Clementina’s disease and polyphonic narration in Samuel Richardson’s <em>Sir Charles Grandison</em> (1754) <br/> III. Illness as narrative<br/> Rudy Le Menthéour, Melancholy vaporised: self-narration and counter-diagnosis in Rousseau’s work<br/> Catriona Seth, Textually transmitted diseases: smallpox inoculation in French literary and medical works<br/> Gavin Budge, Smollett and the novel of irritability<br/> IV. Medical strategies and narrative devices<br/> Sylvie Kleiman-Lafon, The healing power of words: medicine and literature in Bernard Mandeville’s <em>Treatise of the hypochondriack and hysterick diseases</em><br/> Helge Jordheim, Oculist narratives in late-eighteenth-century Germany: from cataract surgery to political conspiracy in Jean Paul’s <em>Hesperus</em><br/> Hugues Marchal, ‘Le poète raconte et ne discute pas’: poetic and medical codes in Jean-François Sacombe’s obstetric epic, <em>La Luciniade</em> (1792-1815) <br/> Summaries<br/> Bibliography<br/> Index<br/>
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