Description
Book SynopsisThis book is a substantial critical study of the literary representation of smallpox and its victims. David Shuttleton draws upon works by Dryden, Johnson, Steele, Goldsmith and Lady Mary Wortley Montagu to uncover the different ways writers found to come to terms with the terror of disease and death.
Trade ReviewReview of the hardback: 'Smallpox and the Literary Imagination provides fascinating reading and … it adds much to our knowledge of the social and political impact of this disease. I certainly gained much from reading this book and it deserves a wide readership. I recommend it to anyone with an interest in the history of disease in the early modern period.' Local Population Studies
Review of the hardback: '… Shuttleton's study leaves virtually no stone unturned … A welcome contribution to the scholarly debate on smallpox, Shuttleton's study offers a well-rounded and illuminating analysis of the disease's semiotic underpinnings …' Celeste Chamberland, Roosevelt University
'… important and impressive monograph …' The Bibliographical Bulletin of the International Arthurian Society
Table of ContentsPrologue; Introduction: imagining smallpox; Part I. Disease: 1. Contagion by conceit; 2. 'What odious change…?': smallpox autopathography; Part II. Death: 3. Smallpox elegy; 4. Sentimental smallpox; Part III. Disfigurement: 5. 'Beauty's enemy' and the disfigured woman; 6. 'Enamel'd not deform'd': manly disfigurements; Part IV. Prevention: 7. 'Beauty's triumph': inoculation; 8. 'Cow mania': vaccination, poetry, and politics; Epilogue; Appendix: smallpox in Georgian portraiture; Select bibliography; Index.
