Book

Illness and Literature in the Low Countries. From the Middle Ages until the 21th Century

From as early as classical antiquity there has been an interplay between literature and medicine.

Author

Editors: Rick Honings, Jaap Grave & Bettina Noak

Date

01 January 2016

The first book of Homer’s Ilias recounts the plague that swept the camp of the Achaeans. While this instance concerns a full-length book, it is the aphorism that is of greater importance as a literary technique for the dissemination of medical knowledge. In addition, the subject of illness and its impact on mankind was explored by great numbers of poetic scholars and scholarly poets.
This collection offers fourteen articles which all highlight the relation between disease and literature. It entails a first-ever overview of Dutch-language research in this field, whereby the literary and cultural functions of medical knowledge and the poetics of medical and literary writing are in the focus.
Göttingen: V&R Unipress, 2015

Dr Rick Honings is Assistant Professor in Dutch Studies at Leiden University. Dr Jaap Grave teaches Modern Dutch Literature at Münster University. Dr Bettina Noak works as research assistant in Dutch Literature at the Institute for German and Dutch Languages and Literature, Freie Universität Berlin.