Desire and Disorder: Fevers, Fictions, and Feeling in English Georgian CultureThis book situates eighteenth-century medical fever texts in the broader framework of sentimental culture, reading works by physicians like Sir Richard Manningham, George Fordyce, John Leake, James Carmichael Smyth, and James Lind against various fictions of the period - novels like Frances Sheridan's Memoirs of Miss Sidney Bidulph, Sarah Fielding's The Adventures of David Simple and Volume the Last, Mary Wollstonecraft's Maria, J. W. Orderson's Creoleana, William Godwin's Caleb Williams, Charles Dickens' Bleak House, and poetry like James Grainger's The Sugar Cane and Anna Letitia Barbauld's Epistle to William Wilberforce. These juxtapositions not only reveal the degree to which physicians deployed the sentimental discourse used by literary artists but also demonstrate that fever as a disease and metaphor was a highly fluid construct, evoked for different reasons and shaped |
Contents
| 15 | |
Cordial Remedies Fevers Female Patients and Sympathetic Practitioners | 30 |
Disqualified for Labor Puerperal Fever Lyingin Hospitals and Mary Wollstonecrafts Wrongs of Woman | 54 |
Breaking thro Stone Walls Jail Fever and Sentimental Reform | 100 |
Insalubrious Regions Tropical Fevers Sensibility and Slavery in the British Caribbean | 149 |
Other editions - View all
Desire and Disorder: Fevers, Fictions, and Feeling in English Georgian Culture Candace Ward No preview available - 2007 |
Common terms and phrases
According Account Amelia anxieties appears argue attend authority becomes body Booth Britain British Caleb Caleb Williams called Caribbean cause century chapter character charity colonial concern course culture death demonstrates depicted describes desire despite discussed disease disorder domestic edited effect eighteenth eighteenth-century England Essay established example experience fact Falkland feeling female Fielding Fielding's George Georgian Godwin hand History House Ibid Indies infection jail fever Jamaica James John Johnny kind labor literature living London Lying-in Hospital Manningham mind Miss moral mother nature Newgate noted novel Observations patients period physical physicians points political poor practice practitioners present prison produced published puerperal fever readers reform relationship represented response reveals scene sense sensibility sentimental sexual Sidney slavery slaves social Society suffering suggests texts tion tropical University University Press West West Indian woman women writings
Popular passages
Page 18 - Sir, (continued he) there is all the difference in the world between characters of nature and characters of manners; and there is the difference between the characters of Fielding and those of Richardson. Characters of manners are very entertaining; but they are to be understood, by a more superficial observer, than characters of nature, where a man must dive into the recesses of the human heart.