This book is about how France's two major documentary authors of the nineteenth century Gustave Flaubert and Émile Zola incorporate medical knowledge about the body into their works, and in so doing exploit its metaphorical potential of the body to engage in critical reflection about the accumulation and reconfiguration of knowledge.

It provides invaluable insights into the debates and power struggles that occupy the scientific and medical world in nineteenth-century France. Furthermore, it helps us reconsider how we conceive of the connection, central to all realisms, between the physiological body and the many texts, fictional or not, that discuss it. (Martine Gantrel, Modern Language Review, Vol. 111 (3), July, 2016)

Autorentext

Larry Duffy has taught French language, culture and literature in universities in Ireland, Australia and the UK, where he is currently Lecturer in French at the University of Kent. He is the author of numerous journal articles about the nineteenth-century encounter between literature, science and medicine.

Inhalt
Introduction: Knowledge, Incorporated PART I : FLAUBERT AND PROFESSIONAL INCORPORATIONS 1. Madame Bovary and the Incorporation of Pharmacy 2. Medical and Literary Discourses of Disciplinary Struggle and Regulation PART II: FLAUBERT, LE CORPS REDRESSÉ 3. Diagnosing the Aveugle, Correcting the Body: Ophthalmia and Orthopaedics 4. Correcting the Aveugle: Monstrosity, Aliénisme and the Haunting of the Social Body PART III: ZOLA: PROFESSIONAL, PATHOLOGICAL AND THEARAPEUTIC INCORPORATIONS 5. La Bête humaine and the Incorporation of Psychiatry: du monstre lombrosien à l'anormal zolien, de la mécanique à la thermodynamique 6. Textual Healing: Le Docteur Pascal's Incorporation of Hypodermic Therapy Conclusion: Taxonomy, Taxidermy and l'esthétique naturaliste Bibliography Index