Overview

Medievalism and medieval medicine are vibrant subfields of medieval studies, enjoying sustained scholarly attention and popularity among undergraduates. Popular perceptions of medieval medicine, however, remain understudied. This book aims to fill that lacuna by providing a multifaceted study of medical medievalism, defined as modern representations of medieval medicine intended for popular audiences. The volume takes as its starting point the fictional medieval detective Brother Cadfael, whose observations on bodies, herbs, and death have shaped many popular conceptions of medieval medicine in the Anglophone world. The ten contributing authors move beyond Cadfael by exploring global medical medievalisms in a range of genres and cultural contexts. Beyond Cadfael is organized into three sections, the first of which engages with how disease, injury, and the sick are imagined in fictitious medieval worlds. The second, on doctors at work, looks at medieval medical practice in novels, films and television, and public commemorative practice. These essays examine how practitioners are represented and imagined in medieval and pseudo-medieval worlds. The third section discusses medicine designed for and practiced by women in the Middle Ages and today, with a focus on East Asian medical traditions. These essays are guided by the recognition that medieval medical practices are often in dialogue with contemporary medical practices that fall outside the norms of Western biomedicine.

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9786156405807

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Lucy C. Barnhouse is an Assistant Professor at Arkansas State University, having previously held positions at the College of Wooster and Wartburg College. Her monograph, Hospitals in Communities of the Late Medieval Rhineland: Houses of God, Places for the Sick (2023), examines hospitals as religious institutions in late medieval cities. She has taught and published on medievalism, leprosy, and religious women, and is a founding member of the Footnoting History podcast. Winston Black holds the Gatto Chair of Christian Studies at St. Francis Xavier University in Nova Scotia, Canada, where he pursues research on religion, medicine, and magic in the medieval world. He is the editor of Henry of Huntingdon's Anglicanus Ortus: A Verse Herbal of the Twelfth Century (2012) and Medicine and Healing in the Premodern West: A History in Documents (2019), and is the author of The Middle Ages: Facts and Fictions (2019), along with over a dozen essays and articles on medieval topics.

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