This open access book studies breath and breathing in literature and culture and provides crucial insights into the history of medicine, health and the emotions, the foundations of beliefs concerning body, spirit and world, the connections between breath and creativity and the phenomenology of breath and breathlessness. Contributions span the classical, medieval, early modern, Romantic, Victorian, modern and contemporary periods, drawing on medical writings, philosophy, theology and the visual arts as well as on literary, historical and cultural studies. The collection illustrates the complex significance and symbolic power of breath and breathlessness across time: breath is written deeply into ideas of nature, spirituality, emotion, creativity and being, and is inextricable from notions of consciousness, spirit, inspiration, voice, feeling, freedom and movement. The volume also demonstrates the long-standing connections between breath and place, politics and aesthetics, illuminating both contrasts and continuities.

This book is open access, which means that you have free and unlimited accessDraws on medical humanities perspectives Studies philosophy, history and literature from classical to contemporary Examines ideas of breath and breathlessness, their cultural and creative significance, and their resonances for contemporary understanding and experience

Autorentext

David Fuller is Emeritus Professor of English at the University of Durham, UK. He has written on literary works from medieval to contemporary, on editorial theory, on opera and on dance. His most recent book is Shakespeare and the Romantics in the series 'Oxford Shakespeare Topics' (2021).

Corinne Saunders is Professor of English and Co-Director of the Institute for Medical Humanities at the University of Durham, UK, and specialises in medieval literature and history of ideas. Her most recent book is the co-edited volume Visions and Voice-Hearing in Medieval and Early Modern Contexts (Palgrave Macmillan 2020).

Jane Macnaughton is Professor of Medical Humanities, Director of the Institute for Medical Humanities at the University of Durham, UK, and a practicing physician. She was Principal Investigator on the Wellcome-funded Life of Breath project (2014-20) and is a co-editor of The Edinburgh Companion to Critical Medical Humanities (2016).

Inhalt

1. The Life of Breath: Contexts and Approaches, David Fuller, Jane Macnaughton, and Corinne Saunders.- 2. Pneumatic Episodes from Homer to Galen, A. A. Long.- 3. Our Common Breath: 'Conspiration' from the Stoics to the Church Fathers, Phillip Sidney Horky.- 4. Late Antique Cultures of Breath: Politics and the Holy Spirit, Thomas E. Hunt.- 5. From Romance to Vision: The Life of Breath in Medieval Literary Texts, Corinne Saunders.- 6. The Transformative Power of Breath: Music, Alternative Therapy, and Medieval Practices of Contemplation, Denis Renevey.- 7. A Breath of Fresh Air: Approaches to Environmental Health in Late Medieval Urban Communities, Carole Rawcliffe.- 8. 'Being Breathed': From King Lear to Clinical Medicine, Katherine A. Craik and Stephen J. Chapman.- 9. 'Let lovers sigh out the rest': Witnessing the Breath in the Early Modern Emotional Body, Naya Tsentourou.- 10. What is 'the breath of our nostrils'? Ruach and Neshamah in John Donne's 1622 Gunpowder Day Sermon, Patrick Gray.- 11. Breathscapes: Natural Environments in Eighteenth-Century Physiology and Psychosomatics of Breathing, Rina Knoeff.- 12. 'Spoken from the impulse of the moment': Epistolarity, Sensibility, and Breath in Frances Burney's Evelina, Gillian Skinner.- 13. 'Eloquence and Oracle': Tobacco in Eighteenth-Century Life and Literature, Andrew Russell.- 14. Romantic Consumption: The Paradox of Fashionable Breath, Clark Lawlor.- 15. Endless Breath? The Pipe Organ and Immortality, Francis O'Gorman.- 16. London Fog as Food: From Pabulum to Poison, Christine L. Corton.- 17. 'Nowfor a breath I tarry': Breath, Desire and Queer Materialism at the fin de siècle, Fraser Riddell.- 18. The Forgotten Obvious: Breathing in Psychoanalysis, Arthur Rose and Oriana Walker.- 19. Mysterious Gear: Modernist Mountaineering, Oxygen Rigs, and the Politics of Breath, Abbie Garrington.- 20. Hearing the Form: Breath and the Structures of Poetry in Charles Olson and Paul Celan, David Fuller.- 21. A Panting Consciousness: Beckett, Breath, and Biocognitive Feedback, Marco Bernini.- 22. Syllabic Gasps: M. NourbeSe Philip and Charles Olson's Poetic Conspiration, Stefanie Heine.- 23. Visualising the Ephemeral, Jayne Wilton.- 24. Breathas Subject, in Form, in Performance: An Interview with Michael Symmons Roberts., Michael Symmons Roberts, with David Fuller.- 25. Afterword. Breath-taking: Ethical Impulses for Breath Studies, Peter Adey.