Choroba – defekt – literatura: perspektywy badania narracji chorobowych
Illness – Defect – Literature: Perspectives on the Study of Illness Narratives

Author(s): Iwona Boruszkowska
Subject(s): Studies of Literature, Ukrainian Literature, Philology
Published by: Wydawnictwa Uniwersytetu Warszawskiego
Keywords: illness and literature; narrative medicine; illness narratives; pathographies
Summary/Abstract: The aim of this paper is to provide an overview of the relations between medical practice and literary studies against the background of the latest theories and research trends. It will be particularly interesting to outline the possibility of using tools from the field of the developing studies of illness as a cultural phenomenon in reviewing the genres of the literature of suffering and illness. The canon of pathographic literature discussions includes publications by Arthur Kleinman, Anne Hawkins, Arthur W. Frank and Thomas Couser. A common element of the discussed genres is the poetics of illness and the use of narrative strategies that present the medical experience. Due to the growing popularity and diversity of the so-called illness writing, it seems necessary to distinguish between autopathography and pathography, where autopathography is a narrative created by an ill person / patient, a specific autobiography (in the form of various ego-documents discussing the illness – letters, diaries, memoirs, etc.), a subjective autobiographical narrative about the illness. The article will then focus on the theory of defect, maladic narratives and the turn towards narrative medicine in literary studies.

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