Review of: Rudolf Käser, Beate Schappach (Hg.): Krank geschrieben. Gesundheit und Krankheit im Diskursfeld von Literatur, Geschlecht und Medizin. Bielefeld: transcript Verlag 2014.

Abstract

In this volume, written predominantly from a cultural studies perspective, the authors deal with the interrelation of literary and medical discourses in reference to the value systems thus generated. Apart from taking a narratological perspective on the literary communication of pathogenic phenomena, the contributors focus on the role of literature in disease-related processes of communication and processes of reorganization within social fabrics of the German-speaking realm during the 18th to 20th centuries. Special (though mostly implicit) emphasis is put on the social dynamics of gender positioning within the analyzed texts. Although - as to the topics and questions examined - the majority of the contributions lack in complexity in terms of gender theory, the compilation presents methodically innovative approaches as well as new interpretive insights into the historical mutability of how health and illness are defined in the context of the respective cultural fields.