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Book Cover
E-book
Author Schonebaum, Andrew, 1975-

Title Novel medicine : healing, literature, and popular knowledge in early modern China / Andrew Schonebaum
Published Seattle : University of Washington Press, [2016]

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Description 1 online resource (viii, 283 pages)
Series A Robert B. Heilman Book
Contents Beginning to read : some methods and background -- Reading medically : novel illnesses, novel cures -- Vernacular curiosities : medical entertainments and memory -- Diseases of sex : medical and literary views of contagion and retribution -- Diseases of Qing : medical and literary views of depletion -- Contagious texts : inherited maladies and the invention of tuberculosis -- Chinese character glossary
Summary "Printed novels, guides to daily life, and practical medical texts were relatively new in sixteenth-century China, but they quickly became popular and influential. Novel Medicine shows how fiction shaped and was shaped by medical discourse and how it popularized practical, vernacular kinds of knowledge. A vibrant exchange among literary, commercial, and medical spheres resulted in a web of texts that produced distinct genealogies of romantic and sexual disease, iconographic lineages of heroic doctors, and medicalized attitudes toward reading. Novel Medicine interrogates how fiction incorporated, created, and disseminated medical knowledge. Conversely, it demonstrates how practical medical texts employed literary devices and figurative strategies to propagate information. Employing interdisciplinary strategies, it examines the dynamic interplay between discourses of fiction and medicine as well as their representations of illnesses and healers. Critical readings of fictional and medical texts, as well as sources such as fiction commentary, criticism, medical manuscripts, newspapers, essays, print images, and biographies inform an understanding of the body in early modern China. These readings also provide a counterpoint to prevailing narratives that focus on the 'literati' aspects of the novel, showing that these texts were not merely read, but were used by a wide variety of readers and for a range of purposes. This inquiry into the intersections of kinds and sources of knowledge--fictional and real, elite and vernacular--illuminates the history of reading and daily life and challenges us to rethink the nature of Chinese literature"--Provided by publisher
Analysis Asian history
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references (pages 257-280) and index
Includes bibliographical references and index
Notes English
Print version record and CIP data provided by publisher; resource not viewed
Subject Chinese fiction -- Ming dynasty, 1368-1644 -- History and criticism
Chinese fiction -- Qing dynasty, 1644-1912 -- History and criticism
Healing in literature.
Medicine in literature.
Diseases in literature.
Medical literature -- China -- History
Literature and society -- China -- History
Books and reading -- Social aspects -- China -- History
Popular culture -- China -- History
Knowledge, Sociology of -- History
Medicine in Literature
Reading -- history
Medical Writing -- history
LITERARY CRITICISM -- Asian -- General.
HISTORY -- Asia -- China.
Books and reading -- Social aspects
Chinese fiction
Chinese fiction -- Ming dynasty
Diseases in literature
Healing in literature
Knowledge, Sociology of
Literature and society
Medical literature
Medicine in literature
Popular culture
Qing Dynasty (China)
Literatur
Chinesisch
Medizin Motiv
SUBJECT China
Subject China
Genre/Form Criticism, interpretation, etc.
History
Form Electronic book
LC no. 2021692749
ISBN 9780295806327
029580632X