Health and mental issues in the literary imagination
By: edited by Mamadou Kandji
Contributors: Guèye, Momar; Collignon, René
Publisher: Diaspora Academy Press
Published: 2011
Place of publication: Dakar, Sénégal
Language: eng
Number of pages: 241
ISBN-13: 9782919134038
Subjects: Literature and medicine; Medicine in literature
Description: "This collection is made of relevant analyses of literary works, scholarly papers written by colleagues serving in African Universities (Senegal, Togo, and Côte d'Ivoire), or in the USA. The works examined are mostly novels by distinguished writers. And though the collection deals with the general theme of health and illness as experienced in different groups of population, these writers, among which one can cite Africans, are not necessarily healthcare professionals. Individual and collective socio-cultural representations and conceptions of illness, its etiologies, its prevention, and its development, whether favourable or not, are central to the different contributions in this volume. This accounts for our particular interest in this book"--Preface, p. [i].
Notes: Includes bibliographical references.
Table of contents: title: Illness, stigmatization and society. From malady to self-apprehension and nation building : a reading of Anthony Biakolo's 'Wonderful Child' / Akoété Amouzou ; Psychopaths, megalomania and the mystique of power in Wole Soyinka's 'King Baabu' and 'A Play of Giants' / Mahib Lo ; The albino in Wole Soyinka's 'The Interpreters' / Oumar Thiam ; Chronicling the 1665 London epidemic : Defoe's 'Journal of the Plague Year' / Mody Sidibé ; An ethnobiological approach to epidemic in Louise Erdrich's 'Tracks' / Pierre Kramoko; title: Medical practice, tradition and spirituality. Traditional medicine versus modern medicine in L. M. Silko's 'Ceremony' / Vamara Koné ; A surgeon's obsession with perfection in Nathaniel Hawthorne's 'The Birthmark' / Louis Mendy ; Traditional medicine in Elechi Amadi's 'The Concubine' / Bawa Kammampoal ; Modern medicine and tradition in Aminata Sow Fall's 'L'appel des arènes' / Mouhamédoul A. Niang ; Medicine and spirituality in Sir Thomas Browne's 'Religio Medici' / El Hadji Cheikh Kandji; title: (cont.) Trauma, otherness and mental health. Psychiatry and paranormality in the writings of Catherine Crowe / Mamadou Kandji ; Post-traumatic disorders and sexual pathologies in Martin Amis' 'Yellow Dog' / Maguette Ndiaye ; Intoxication and narration : a psychoanalytic reading of 'A Drunk Man Looks at the Thistle' / Cousson Traoré Sall ; Illness and hybridity in Leslie Marmon Silko's 'Ceremony' / Daouda Coulibaly ; The trauma of the unhealthy in 'The Bluest Eye' by Toni Morrison / Sindou Soumahoro; title: Postface.