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DRPS : Course Catalogue : School of Literatures, Languages and Cultures : English Literature

Undergraduate Course: Medicine in Literature 1: Illness Narratives through History (ENLI10355)

Course Outline
SchoolSchool of Literatures, Languages and Cultures CollegeCollege of Humanities and Social Science
Credit level (Normal year taken)SCQF Level 10 (Year 3 Undergraduate) AvailabilityAvailable to all students
SCQF Credits20 ECTS Credits10
SummaryThis course aims to develop the student¿s understanding of the history of medicine and its influence on literature through the ages; of the relationship between this development and other discourses of embodiment; of the emergence of various illness narratives; of the relationship between these and various major historical discoveries, developments and events.

The course will achieve these aims by reading poems, plays and novels from antiquity to the present day, alongside various non-fiction sources. This course is, however, not merely a historical overview. It will allow students to examine the ways in which discourses of embodiment and the view of the sick body change according to shifting political, social and cultural contexts.
Course description 1. Introduction: Historicising Medicine in Fiction: Extract from Thomas Laqueur, Making Sex (1990); extract from Roy Porter, The Greatest Benefit to Mankind (1997)
2. Galenic Medicine, Potency and Madness in Ancient drama: Euripides, Herakles (c. 416 BC); Sophocles, Oedipus Rex (c. 429 BC); extract from Galen, On the Usefulness of the Parts of the Body (c. 200 AD)
3. Plagues, madness and love sickness: Geoffrey Chaucer, Troilus and Criseyde (c. 1380); Robert Henryson, The Testament of Cresseid (c. 1480)
4. The Four Humours, Illness and Early Modern Drama: Ben Johnson, The Alchemist (c. 1610); William Shakespeare, The Tempest (c. 1611); extract from Robert Burton, The Anatomy of Melancholy (1621)
5. Poetry, Passion, and Consumption: Selection of poetry from John Keats and Percy Bysshe Shelley; Susan Sontag, Illness as Metaphor (1978)
6. Nursing, the Sick Room and Sacrifice: Elizabeth Gaskell, Ruth (1853); Harriet Martineau, Life in the Sickroom (1844)
7. War Torn Bodies and the Health Institution: Selection of poetry from Siegfried Sassoon, Wilfred Owen and Rupert Brooke.
8. ESSAY WRITING WEEK
9. Identities in Sickness: Michael Cunningham, The Hours (1998); Virginia Woolf, Mrs Dalloway (1925); On Being Ill (1930)
10. Madness and Literature: Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar (1963); Sarah Kane, 4.48 Psychosis (2000)
11. Illness as Art: Jean Dominique Bauby, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (1997); extract from Bob Flanagan, Sick (1997)
Entry Requirements (not applicable to Visiting Students)
Pre-requisites Students MUST have passed: ( English Literature 1 (ENLI08001) OR Scottish Literature 1 (ENLI08016)) AND ( English Literature 2 (ENLI08003) OR Scottish Literature 2 (ENLI08004))
Co-requisites
Prohibited Combinations Other requirements Students admitted to the intercalated BMedSci are also eligible to take this course.
Information for Visiting Students
Pre-requisitesA MINIMUM of 4 college/university level literature courses at grade B or above (should include no more than one introductory level literature course). Related courses such as civilisation or other interdisciplinary classes, Freshman Year Seminars or composition/creative writing classes/workshops are not considered for admission to this course. Applicants should also note that, as with other popular courses, meeting the minimum does NOT guarantee admission. In making admissions decisions preference will be given to students who achieve above the minimum requirement with the typical visiting student admitted to this course having 4 literature classes at grade A.

** as numbers are limited, visiting students should contact the Visiting Student Office directly for admission to this course **
Course Delivery Information
Academic year 2014/15, Available to all students (SV1) Quota:  15
Course Start Semester 1
Timetable Timetable
Learning and Teaching activities (Further Info) Total Hours: 200 ( Seminar/Tutorial Hours 20, Programme Level Learning and Teaching Hours 4, Directed Learning and Independent Learning Hours 176 )
Assessment (Further Info) Written Exam 75 %, Coursework 25 %, Practical Exam 0 %
Additional Information (Assessment) One coursework essay of 2,500 words (25%).
Final assessment will consist of an examination essay of 3,000 words for both intercalated BA students and English Literature students (75%).

Visiting Student (Semester 1 only) Assessment
1 essay of 2,500 words (25%);
1 exam essay of 3,000 words (75%)
Feedback Not entered
No Exam Information
Academic year 2014/15, Part-year visiting students only (VV1) Quota:  6
Course Start Semester 1
Timetable Timetable
Learning and Teaching activities (Further Info) Total Hours: 200 ( Seminar/Tutorial Hours 20, Programme Level Learning and Teaching Hours 4, Directed Learning and Independent Learning Hours 176 )
Assessment (Further Info) Written Exam 75 %, Coursework 25 %, Practical Exam 0 %
Additional Information (Assessment) One coursework essay of 2,500 words (25%).
Final assessment will consist of an examination essay of 3,000 words for both intercalated BA students and English Literature students (75%).

Visiting Student (Semester 1 only) Assessment
1 essay of 2,500 words (25%);
1 exam essay of 3,000 words (75%)
Feedback Not entered
No Exam Information
Learning Outcomes
In addition to the skills training common to all English Literature Honours courses (essay-writing, independent reading, group discussion, oral presentation, small-group autonomous learning), students will acquire a broad understanding of the way in which literary forms have been the vehicles through which our understanding of illness has been articulated.
Reading List
Thomas Laqueur, Making Sex (1990)
Howard Brody, Stories of Sickness (2003)
Frederick F. Cartwright, Disease and History (1972)
Rita Charon, Narrative Medicine: Honoring the Stories of Illness (2008)
Yasmin Gunaratnam and David Oliviere, Narrative and Stories in Healthcare: Illness, Dying, and Bereavement (2009)
A. F. Kleinman, The Illness Narratives: Suffering, Healing, and the Human Condition (1988)
Jeffrey Meyers, Disease and the Novel, 1880-1960 (1985)
Roy Porter, Bodies Politic: Disease, Death and Doctors in Britain, 1650-1900 (2001)
Carole Rawcliffe, Leprosy in Medieval England (2009)
Tory Vandeventer, Women and Disability in Medieval Literature (2011)
Jonathan Gil Harris, Sick Economies: Drama, Mercantilism and Disease in Shakespeare's England (2003)
Gail Kern Paster, Humouring the Body: Emotions and the Shakespearean Stage (2004)
Rebecca Totaro, Suffering in Paradise: The Bubonic Plague in English Literature from More to Milton (2005)
Alan Bewell, Romanticism and Colonial Disease (1999)
Katharine Byrne, Tuberculosis and the Victorian Literary Imagination (2011)
Athena Vrettos, Somatic Fictions: Imagining Illness in Victorian Culture (1995)
Diana Berry and Campbell Mackenzie (eds.), The Legacy of War: Poetry, Prose, Painting and Physic (1995)

Additional Information
Course URL http://www.ed.ac.uk/schools-departments/literatures-languages-cultures/english-literature/undergraduate/current/honours
Graduate Attributes and Skills Not entered
Additional Class Delivery Information 1 hour(s) per week for 10 week(s): attendance at autonomous learning group at time to be arranged
KeywordsNot entered
Contacts
Course organiserDr Katherine Inglis
Tel: (0131 6)50 3617
Email: K.Inglis@ed.ac.uk
Course secretaryMs June Haigh
Tel: (0131 6)50 3620
Email: j.haigh@ed.ac.uk
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