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Science, medicine, and aristocratic lineage in Victorian popular fiction / Abigail Boucher.

9783031411410 (electronic bk.)
3031411412 (electronic bk.)
9783031411403
3031411404

Cham : Palgrave Macmillan, 2023.

English

1 online resource (x, 237 pages.)

10.1007/978-3-031-41141-0 doi

PR871

823/.809

Science, Medicine, and Lineage in Popular Fiction of the Long Nineteenth Century explores the dialogue between popular literature and medical and scientific discourse in terms of how they represent the highly visible an pathologized British aristocratic body. This books explores and complicates the two major portrayals of aristocrats in nineteenth-century literature: that of the medicalised, frail, debauched, and diseased aristocrat, and that of the heroic, active, beautiful 'noble', both of which are frequent and resonant in popular fiction of the long nineteenth century. Abigail Boucher argues that the concept of class in the long nineteenth century implicitly includes notions of blood, lineage, and bodily 'correctness', and that 'class' was therefore frequently portrayed as an empirical, scientific, and medical certainty. Due to their elevated and highly visual social positions, both historical and fictional aristocrats were frequently pathologized in the public mind and watched for signs of physical excellence or deviance. Using popular fiction, Boucher establishes patterns across decades, genres, and demographics and considers how these patterns react to, normalise, or feed into the advent of new scientific and medical understandings.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

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Online resource; title from PDF title page (SpringerLink, viewed September 7, 2023).

Palgrave studies in literature, science, and medicine, 2634-6443

Print version: 9783031411403

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