Reading Bodies: Narrating Illness in Spanish and European Literatures and Cultures (1870s to 1960s)

The interconnections between literature and medicine have been the focus of increasing scholarly interest. Building on recent studies in this field of Modern Languages (Fernández- Medina, 2018; Murphy, 2017; Wong, forthcoming) and transnational Medical Humanities (Elsner and Wilson, 2022; Novillo-Corvalán, 2015), the workshop will analyse cultural narratives of illness in Europe from the late-nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century. Drawing together specialists across language disciplines (foregrounding Hispanic Studies alongside French, German, Italian and Portuguese), the project traces the development of narratives of ill-health from the 1870s to the 1960s and beyond, with particular attention to gendered representations of psychological and physical conditions. This transnational approach seeks to foster collaboration and shared insights across languages. The research includes the importance of language and cultural representation for the dissemination and legitimisation of ideas about health and illness, and the ways in which literary and other cultural texts express societies’ fears and preoccupations, including during periods of social change. The workshop will also encourage discussion about the legacy and ongoing echoes of cultural narratives of the body, health and illness up to the present day. This is the first of two research workshops on the project theme.