The Representation of Medicine in Literature and Fine Art

1. Thomas Mann and Medicine

Dr Thomas Rütten’s research into the work of Thomas Mann explores such topics as cholera in Thomas Mann’s Death in Venice, the concept of death in The Magic Mountain, the notion of genius and melancholy in Doktor Faustus, the railway disease in The Railway Accident, cancer in The Black Swan, and Thomas Mann as an amateur medical student, medical historian, medical correspondent, and as a patient.  Most recently, Dr Rütten has looked into the representation of bacteriology in Thomas Mann’s works.

His research has been presented at the Cheltenham Literature Festival (2008; in a discussion with Prof. Ritchie Robertson, Michael Hofmann chaired by Peter Guttridge), at the Universities of Giessen (1999), Berne (2004), and Munich (2004), at the Centro Tedesco di Studi Veneziani in Venice (2006) and elsewhere.  Dr Rütten has also presented his research at the Davoser Literaturtage (1998, 2000, 2002, 2004, 2006, 2010), at which he has also formed part of the academic comittee.  For more information about this festival, please visit our Davoser Literaturtage page.

At the Northern Centre, Dr Rütten’s research tied in with Ellen Tullo’s work on the advent of  cholera in Gateshead in 1832, and her work on John Webster’s The Duchess of Malfi; with Nadine Metzger’s work on the representation of lycanthropy in fiction; with various MA students’ interest in fiction and medicine.

Internationally, the research has been conducted in collaboration with colleagues in German Literature and Translation Studies, medical historians, and doctors. The results were published in the Thomas Mann Studien, Gesnerus, the British Medical Journal and elsewhere. They inform Dr Rütten’s undergraduate and graduate teaching at Newcastle University and help to establish the Northern Centre for the History of Medicine as a hub for the medical humanities.

This research has also led to projects with a slightly different focus:
The edition with commentary and introduction of the hitherto unknown correspondence between Adolf v. Grolman and Thomas Mann (2006).

2. Contagionism and Contagious Diseases in Medicine and Literature between 1880 and 1933

Dr Thomas Rütten (Newcastle University) and Dr Martina King (Institut für Deutsche Philologie, Ludwig-Maximilians University, Munich and University of Glasgow) jointly organised the conference 'Contagionism and Contagious Diseases in Medicine and Literature between 1880 and 1933', held in Newcastle, 25 - 27 August 2011.

An interdisciplinary discussion was held, covering, on the one hand, the fundamental reorganisation of medical knowledge concerning key diseases, such as tuberculosis, syphilis, cholera and typhus. Such a reorganisation, which stems from the bacteriological paradigm shift, conflicts, in many cases, with previously dominant literary motifs such as the connection between disease, decadence and aesthetic sensibility, which pervades fictional literature from the romantic period to the Décadence.

On the other hand, the dialogue was directed towards questions of semantics and narrativity. The scientific discourses on epidemics, parasitism and hygiene undergo transformations in popular media, thus opening them to related communications (Briese 2003). The discussion on questions of infection and the associated issues of identity, typical for the period in question, thus takes place not only within the confines of strictly medical dialogue, but also in wider forums of communication. Pertinent reflections can be found, for example, in philosophical, ideological, aesthetic and literary texts, with Thomas Mann’s fiction as an exemplary case in point (Sprecher 2002). Epidemiological knowledge provides an innovative inventory of images as well as a narrative structure by ordering elements and characters of fictional texts (King 2008). ‘Infection’ of a physical or mental nature does indeed function as a principle of character transformation.

For more information about the Contagionism and Contagious Diseases in Medicine and Literature between 1880 and 1933 Conference, please visit our conference page.

3. The Hippocrates portrait in Federico da Montefeltro's studiolo at Urbino

Sonja Lapraik is pursuing her research into the representation of medicine in fine art and culture in the Italian Renaissance court with her PhD project 'The Hippocrates portrait in Federico da Montefeltro's studiolo at Urbino' (supervised by Dr Thomas Rütten).