Narrating Medicine in Middle English Poetry

Filling a gap in what we know about medical writing in England in the 100+ years after the advent of the “Great Mortality”, this book calls attention to a discourse that privileges illness narratives, strategies of self-care, and the voices of poets, patients, and practitioners. Working from the assumption that there is a discernible link between catastrophic disease events and an upsurge in writing about death and the health of the body, this book recognizes the formation of a discourse written for a non-academic audience that provides information on how to interpret symptoms of disease, how to devise effective treatments, and how to implement regimens of health believed to be preventative. When read in conjunction with medical treatises, plague tractates, and verse remedies, literary narratives disclose an experience of illness that other genres of medical writing lack, thus enabling us to see the kinship between poetry and the healing arts. Deploying an interpretive method from 21st-century medical humanities programs, as Rita Charon’s practice of narrative medicine has, we learn how to diagnose a text as if we were diagnosing a body both by observing its symptoms and by listening closely to the stories of patients. This study brings the storytelling practices of poets, patients, and physicians in the midst of a medieval public health crisis to the attention of a 21st-century audience. In doing so, it asks these key questions: How can we recuperate the voices of those afflicted by illness in medieval texts when we have no direct testimony? How do we interpret stories told by patients in narratives mediated by others? Where do women factor into the shaping of a medical canon? How does medical writing intersect with religious belief and memorial practices governed by the Church? How do regimens of health benefit a population in the throes of an epidemic?