{"product_id":"symptomatic-subjects-bodies-medicine-and-causation-in-the-literature-of-late-medieval-england-hardback-9780812250909","title":"Symptomatic Subjects; Bodies, Medicine, and Causation in the Literature of Late Medieval England (Hardback) 9780812250909","description":"\u003cfont face=\"Georgia\"\u003e\r\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cfont size=\"6\"\u003eSymptomatic Subjects\u003c\/font\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\u003cfont size=\"5\"\u003eBodies, Medicine, and Causation in the Literature of Late Medieval England\u003c\/font\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cfont size=\"4\"\u003eJulie Orlemanski (Author)\u003c\/font\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cfont size=\"3\"\u003e9780812250909\u003c\/font\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cfont size=\"3\"\u003eHardback, published 17 May 2019\u003c\/font\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cfont size=\"3\"\u003e344 pages, 4 illus.\u003cbr\u003e22.9 x 15.2 x 2.9 cm, 0.676 kg\u003c\/font\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\u003cp align=\"justify\"\u003e\u003cem\u003e\u003cfont size=\"3\"\u003e\"Orlemanski has provided scholars of all kinds of late medieval texts with a vital set of critical tools with which they might newly attend to the uncertain, plural, and fluid relationship between body, self, and other, and to the sustained medieval conversations that took place between literary and medical writings.\" (\u003ci\u003eJournal of British Studies\u003c\/i\u003e) \"Through her dynamic readings of texts that feature descriptions of bodily processes, Orlemanski shows that late medieval literary writers had come to see literary production as a space in which embodiment, textuality, and signification could be explored . . . [W]hat Orlemanski does in her literary readings is energizing and challenging. Her book's engagement with late medieval textuality and physicality will be of great interest to scholars in the field.\" (\u003ci\u003eStudies in the Age of Chaucer\u003c\/i\u003e) \"[V]ery erudite and interesting . . . \u003ci\u003eSymptomatic Subjects\u003c\/i\u003e is an impressive tour de force of literary and philosophical- especially semiotic-analysis. As the title indicates, it centers on causality as manifested in ailing human bodies. Having established the historical and philosophical background, the author turns to contemporary literature to substantiate and analyze the medical contents of several works.\" (\u003ci\u003eIsis\u003c\/i\u003e) \"\u003cp\u003e[P]atient, sustained, synthetic historical exposition plays into patient, sustained, coherent, often intricate readings. The casually browsing reader might suppose this to be a literary history of\u003cbr\u003e \u003ci\u003ephysik,\u003c\/i\u003e but \u003ci\u003eSymptomatic Subjects\u003c\/i\u003e is more intellectually gripping than that.\u003c\/p\u003e \" (SEL Studies in English Literature 1500-1900) \"An exciting, accomplished, and dazzling book. Julie Orlemanski is reinventing the field of literature and medicine, making a signal contribution to the medical humanities while gifting the field of Middle English studies with a bracing series of new interpretations that will influence our readings of medieval and other literatures for many years to come.\" (Bruce Holsinger, University of Virginia)\u003c\/font\u003e\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp align=\"justify\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cfont size=\"3\"\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn the period just prior to medicine's modernity-before the rise of Renaissance anatomy, the centralized regulation of medical practice, and the valorization of scientific empiricism-England was the scene of a remarkable upsurge in medical writing. Between the arrival of the Black Death in 1348 and the emergence of printed English books a century and a quarter later, thousands of discrete medical texts were copied, translated, and composed, largely for readers outside universities. These widely varied texts shared a model of a universe crisscrossed with physical forces and a picture of the human body as a changeable, composite thing, tuned materially to the world's vicissitudes. According to Julie Orlemanski, when writers like Geoffrey Chaucer, Robert Henryson, Thomas Hoccleve, and Margery Kempe drew on the discourse of \u003ci\u003ephisik\u003c\/i\u003e-the language of humors and complexions, leprous pustules and love sickness, regimen and pharmacopeia-they did so to chart new circuits of legibility between physiology and personhood.\u003cbr\u003e Orlemanski explores the texts of her vernacular writers to show how they deployed the rich terminology of embodiment and its ailments to portray symptomatic figures who struggled to control both their bodies and the interpretations that gave their bodies meaning. As medical paradigms mingled with penitential, miraculous, and socially symbolic systems, these texts demanded that a growing number of readers negotiate the conflicting claims of material causation, intentional action, and divine power. Examining both the medical writings of late medieval England and the narrative and poetic works that responded to them, \u003ci\u003eSymptomatic Subjects\u003c\/i\u003e illuminates the period's conflicts over who had the authority to construe bodily signs and what embodiment could be made to mean.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003c\/font\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cfont size=\"3\"\u003e\u003cp\u003eList of Abbreviationsix\u003cbr\u003e Introduction\u003cbr\u003e PART I. THINKING WITH \u003ci\u003ePhisik\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Chapter 1. Imagining Etiology\u003cbr\u003e Chapter 2. Cause, Authority, Sign, and Book\u003cbr\u003e PART II. PLAYING WITH \u003ci\u003ePhisik\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Chapter 3. Satire and Medical Materialism\u003cbr\u003e Chapter 4. Embodying Causation in Exempla\u003cbr\u003e PART III. EMPLOTTING \u003ci\u003ePhisik\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Chapter 5. The Metaphysics of \u003ci\u003ePhisik\u003c\/i\u003e in the \"Knight's Tale\"\u003cbr\u003e Chapter 6. Desire and Defacement in the \u003ci\u003eTestament of Cresseid\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Part IV. PERSONALIZING \u003ci\u003ePhisik\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Chapter 7. Symptoms and the Signifying Condition in Hoccleve's \u003ci\u003eSeries\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Chapter 8. From Noise to Narration in the \u003ci\u003eBook of Margery Kempe\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Coda\u003cbr\u003e Notes\u003cbr\u003e Works Cited\u003cbr\u003e Index\u003cbr\u003e Acknowledgments\u003c\/p\u003e\u003c\/font\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\u003c\/font\u003e","brand":"University of Pennsylvania Press","offers":[{"title":"Brand New","offer_id":52559225192728,"sku":"9780812250909","price":48.29,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"url":"https:\/\/freshlyprintedbooks.co.uk\/products\/symptomatic-subjects-bodies-medicine-and-causation-in-the-literature-of-late-medieval-england-hardback-9780812250909","provider":"Freshly Printed Books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}