Narratives and Politics of a Diagnosis: The Construction and Circulation of Hysteria as a Medical Category, 1730--1820 (2007)
Arnaud, Sabine M. (Author)
New York, City University of
Crapanzano, Vincent
Publication date: 2007
Language: English
Edition Details: Advisor: Crapanzano, Vincent
Physical Details: 586 pp.
My thesis examines the presence of the category of hysteria in France from 1730 until the standardization of its use in 1820. The corpus of French and English source materials includes medical publications, physicians' manuscripts, treatises on morality, political pamphlets, plays, and novels. The work begins with a study of terminology, retracing the web of terms used throughout the eighteenth century to discuss what would be recognized as one illness in the nineteenth century. It studies doctors' formation of symptoms into a category and their efforts to convey an idea of the malady despite its contradictory manifestations. It focuses upon the use of literary figures to characterize the illness. The second chapter describes the localization of hysteria in different parts of the body and the imagination. It compares theories on hysteria with those on melancholy, epilepsy, hypochondria, Saint Vitus dance, and tarantella, analyzing how doctors distinguished between these illnesses despite the overlap of symptoms. The third chapter examines the casting of patients' bodies as confessions of their way of life. It delves into the power relationships that structure encounters between doctors and patients, and demonstrates how they contributed to diagnoses, treatments, and discipline. The fourth chapter concerns physicians' writing strategies and their employ of literary genres. The formats of patient testimonials, correspondence, autobiography, and dialogue were used to heighten readers' interest and affirm doctors' literary sensibility and sympathy. The fifth chapter regards the use of hysteria as a pretext for theorizations around class, sexual difference, geography, and race. It studies its usage in the crises of the Convulsionaries, and the French Revolution. The sixth chapter studies the role of hysteric pathology in literature. Theatrical pieces, fables and anecdotes employ symptoms as a system of signs displayed for specific purposes. In Lennox's Female Quixote , Godwin's Caleb Williams , Diderot's The Nun , pathology is used to contrast conflicting interpretations and question the role of representation. The use of medical vocabulary to describe the feminine body illness in novels by Madame de Charrière, Madame de Staël, and Madame Cottin signals a development of interiority as a space for literary inquiry.
...MoreDescription Cited in Diss. Abstr. Int. A 68/09 (2008). Pub. no. AAT 3283155.
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