Book Description

Writing the Self in Illness: Reading the Experiential Through the Medical Memoir is MUP’s refreshing venture into the developing fields of Medical and Health Humanities with an aim to consider the necessity of the narrative knowledge as complementary to the contemporary notions of well-being, illness, and healthcare. Is individual happiness contingent on health and well-being? How does one find happiness in the throes of illness? In the present-day scenario, wherein medical practice is largely dominated by evidence-based understanding, diagnostic language, and problem-solving methods, the discipline of Medical Humanities emerges with a reciprocal dialogue between Humanities, Social Sciences, Health, and Medicine. The study of varied experiential narratives – literary works and unmediated accounts of patients and healthcare professionals, is foregrounded in Medical Humanities to amplify knowledge and understanding about the complexity of encounters with illness and their transformational quality in a nuanced manner. Both thought-provoking and informative, this publication brings about the anecdotal form of personal narratives in the light of medical discourses along with the specific cultural context of the narrative. The present publication seeks to be an important reading for students and academics in the field of medical humanities, health professionals or medical practitioners, as well as scholars aspiring to venture into this flourishing field.