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Book Detail
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The Science of Starving in Victorian Literature, Medicine, and Political Economy
Mangham, Andrew
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Category: History of Medicine Publisher: Oxford University Press Imprint: Oxford University Press Affiliation: Professor of Victorian Literature and Medical Humanities, University of Reading Audience: Professional and scholarly Dimensions: 6.1 x 0.8 x 9.3 in
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Synopsis:
The Science of Starving in Victorian Literature, Medicine, and Political Economy is a reassessment of the languages and methodologies used, throughout the nineteenth century, for discussing extreme hunger in Britain. Set against the providentialism of conservative political economy, this study
uncovers an emerging, dynamic way of describing literal starvation in medicine and physiology. No longer seen as a divine punishment for individual failings, starvation became, in the human sciences, a pathology whose horrific symptoms registered failings of state and statute. Providing new and
historically-rich readings of the works of Charles Kingsley, Elizabeth Gaskell, and Charles Dickens, this book suggests that the realism we have come to associate with Victorian social problem fiction learned a vast amount from the empirical, materialist objectives of the medical sciences and that,
within the mechanics of these intersections, we find important re-examinations of how we might think about this ongoing humanitarian issue.
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