Contagionism and Contagious Diseases : Medicine and Literature 1880-1933 /

Contagionism and Contagious Diseases : Medicine and Literature 1880-1933 /

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The idea of contagious transmission, either by material particles or by infectious ideas, has played a powerful role in the development of the Western World since antiquity. Yet it acquired quite a precise signature during the process of scientific and cultural differentiation in the 19th and early...

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Bibliographic Details
Corporate Author: De Gruyter
Other Authors: Anz, Thomas (Contributor, https://id.loc.gov/vocabulary/relators/ctb), Briese, Olaf (Contributor, https://id.loc.gov/vocabulary/relators/ctb), Elsaghe, Yahya (Contributor, https://id.loc.gov/vocabulary/relators/ctb), Gradmann, Christoph (Contributor, https://id.loc.gov/vocabulary/relators/ctb), King, Martina (Editor, http://id.loc.gov/vocabulary/relators/edt, Contributor, https://id.loc.gov/vocabulary/relators/ctb), Käser, Rudolf (Contributor, https://id.loc.gov/vocabulary/relators/ctb), Montiel, Luis (Contributor, https://id.loc.gov/vocabulary/relators/ctb), Rousseau, G. S (George Sebastian) (Contributor, https://id.loc.gov/vocabulary/relators/ctb), Rütten, Thomas (Contributor, https://id.loc.gov/vocabulary/relators/ctb), Rütten, Thomas (Editor, http://id.loc.gov/vocabulary/relators/edt), Saul, Nicholas (Contributor, https://id.loc.gov/vocabulary/relators/ctb), Wald, Priscilla (Contributor, https://id.loc.gov/vocabulary/relators/ctb)
Format: Book
Language:English
Published: Berlin ; Boston : De Gruyter, [2013]
Series:spectrum Literaturwissenschaft / spectrum Literature : Komparatistische Studien / Comparative Studies , 38
Subjects:
Communicable diseases in literature
Contagion (Social psychology)
Literature and medicine
Ansteckung
Bakteriologie
Krankheitsnarrative
Literarische Moderne
Metaphern, medizinische
MEDICAL / History
Contagionism
bacteriology
illness narratives
literary Modernism
medical metaphors
Description
Summary:The idea of contagious transmission, either by material particles or by infectious ideas, has played a powerful role in the development of the Western World since antiquity. Yet it acquired quite a precise signature during the process of scientific and cultural differentiation in the 19th and early 20th centuries. This volume explores the significance and cultural functions of contagionism in this period, from notions of infectious homosexuality and the concept of social contagion to the political implications of bacteriological fieldwork. The history of the concept 'microbe' in aesthetic modernism is adressed as well as bacteriological metaphors in American literary historiography. Within this broad framework, contagionism as a literary narrative is approached in more focussed contributions: from its emotional impact in literary modernism to the idea of physical or psychic contagion in authors such as H.G. Wells, Kurt Lasswitz, Gustav Meyrinck, Ernst Weiss, Thomas Mann and Max Frisch. This twofold approach of general topics and individual literary case studies produces a deeper understanding of the symbolic implications of contagionism marking the boundaries between sick and healthy, familiar and alien, morally pure and impure
Physical Description:1 online resource (242 pages)
Issued also in printing
Format:Mode of access: Internet via World Wide Web
ISBN:9783110306118
ISSN:1860-210X ;
Access:Restricted for use by site license.

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