Overview

Though often seen as scientific or objective, medicine has a fundamentally narrative aspect. Much like how an author constructs meaning around fictional events, a doctor or patient narrates the course of an illness and treatment. In what ways have literary and medical storytelling intersected with and shaped each other? In Medical Storyworlds, Elena Fratto examines the relationship between literature and medicine at the turn of the twentieth century-a period when novelists were experimenting with narrative form and the modern medical establishment was taking shape. She traces how Russian writers such as Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, and Bulgakov responded to contemporary medical and public health prescriptions, placing them in dialogue with French and Italian authors including Romains and Svevo and such texts as treatises by Paul Broca and Cesare Lombroso. In nuanced readings of these works, Fratto reveals how authors and characters question the rhetoric and authority of medicine and public health in telling stories of mortality, illness, and well-being. In so doing, she argues, they provide alternative ways of thinking about the limits and possibilities of human agency and free will. Bridging the medical humanities, European literary studies, and Slavic studies, Medical Storyworlds shows how narrative theory and canonical literary texts offer a new lens on today's debates in medical ethics and bioethics.

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9780231202329

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Reviews

A significant contribution to the growing field of medical humanities and its applications to Russian literary and cultural studies, Fratto's book makes striking connections between narratives written a century ago and the most pressing concerns in today's medical ethics. Engaging, informative, and inspired. -- Julia Vaingurt, coeditor of <i>The Human Reimagined: Posthumanism in Russia</i> Moving fluidly between modern medicine and Russian literature, Fratto explores a vital question: who authors medical narratives. Focused on questions of plot and agency, her subtle analyses reveal how physicians develop their ideas about disease, entrepreneurs market meanings of health, and patients assert their voices to narrate their own medical storylines. -- David S. Jones, author of <i>Broken Hearts: The Tangled History of Cardiac Care</i>

A significant contribution to the growing field of medical humanities and its applications to Russian literary and cultural studies, Fratto's book makes striking connections between narratives written a century ago and the most pressing concerns in today's medical ethics. Engaging, informative, and inspired. -- Julia Vaingurt, coeditor of <i>The Human Reimagined: Posthumanism in Russia</i>

A significant contribution to the growing field of medical humanities and its applications to Russian literary and cultural studies, Fratto's book makes striking connections between narratives written a century ago and the most pressing concerns in today's medical ethics. Engaging, informative, and inspired. -- Julia Vaingurt, coeditor of <i>The Human Reimagined: Posthumanism in Russia</i> Moving fluidly between modern medicine and Russian literature, Fratto explores a vital question: who authors medical narratives. Focused on questions of plot and agency, her subtle analyses reveal how physicians develop their ideas about disease, entrepreneurs market meanings of health, and patients assert their voices to narrate their own medical storylines. -- David S. Jones, author of <i>Broken Hearts: The Tangled History of Cardiac Care</i> This elegant book stages nothing less than a Slavic studies intervention in medical humanities-and vice-versa. In the process, Fratto draws myriad revelatory connections between the writings of Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, and Bulgakov, among others, and such present-day concerns as medical ethics, disability, posthumanism, and the Covid-19 pandemic. In short, Medical Storyworlds is a triumph. -- Jose Alaniz, University of Washington, Seattle

A significant contribution to the growing field of medical humanities and its applications to Russian literary and cultural studies, Fratto’s book makes striking connections between narratives written a century ago and the most pressing concerns in today’s medical ethics. Engaging, informative, and inspired. -- Julia Vaingurt, coeditor of <i>The Human Reimagined: Posthumanism in Russia</i> Moving fluidly between modern medicine and Russian literature, Fratto explores a vital question: Who authors medical narratives? Focused on questions of plot and agency, her subtle analyses reveal how physicians develop their ideas about disease, entrepreneurs market meanings of health, and patients assert their voices to narrate their own medical storylines. -- David S. Jones, author of <i>Broken Hearts: The Tangled History of Cardiac Care</i> This elegant book stages nothing less than a Slavic studies intervention in medical humanities—and vice versa. In the process, Fratto draws myriad revelatory connections between the writings of Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, and Bulgakov, among others, and such present-day concerns as medical ethics, disability, posthumanism, and the Covid-19 pandemic. In short, Medical Storyworlds is a triumph. -- José Alaniz, author of <i>Death, Disability, and the Superhero: The Silver Age and Beyond</i> An original and thought-provoking study . . . Fratto’s lively book provides compelling new interpretations of canonical works of Russian literature, and it manages to put the discipline of Slavic Studies into a productive dialogue with contemporary Medical Humanities. * Journal of Medical Humanities * [A] fascinating, very well-written, and timely book. * Modern Language Review * [A] nuanced and richly interdisciplinary study. * The Russian Review * Fratto’s expansive source base, including Russian, French, and Italian texts, along with her command of the theoretical literature, gives us a new platform from which the medical humanities can continue to develop. * Modern Language Quarterly *

Author Information

Elena Fratto is an assistant professor in the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures at Princeton University.

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