Table of Contents

Acknowledgements; 1. Introduction: Romantic materialism; 2. Science and sympathy in Frankenstein; 3. Natural supernaturalism in Thomas Carlyle and Richard Owen; 4. Wuthering Heights and domestic medicine: the child's body and the book; 5. Literalization in the novels of Charlotte Brontë; 6. Charles Darwin and Romantic medicine; 7. Middlemarch and the medical case report: the patient's narrative and the physical exam; Notes; Bibliography; Index.

Promotional Information

Janis McLarren Caldwell investigates the impact of medical science and the Romantic interest in material culture on nineteenth-century literature.

About the Author

Janis McLarren Caldwell practiced emergency medicine for five years before pursuing a Ph.D. in English Literature. She now teaches literature and science at Wake Forest University, where she is an Assistant Professor of English. An expert in nineteenth-century literature and medicine, she has received grants for research at Cambridge University and at Harvard University's Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study.

Reviews

From the hardback review: '... it contains some useful work on an impressive array of primary sources. The influence of medicine and medical theory on Romantic and Victorian writers remains insufficiently acknowledged. Janis McLarren Caldwell restores that influence to its rightful place.' Times Literary Supplement