商品簡介
The Body in the Library provides a nuanced and realistic picture of how medicine and society have abetted and thwarted each other ever since the lawyers behind the French Revolution banished the clergy and replaced them with doctors, priests of the body. Ranging from Charles Dickens to Oliver Sacks, Anton Chekhov to Raymond Queneau, Fanny Burney to Virginia Woolf, Miguel Torga to Guido Ceronetti,The Body in the Library is an anthology of poems, stories, journal entries, Socratic dialogue, table-talk, clinical vignettes, aphorisms, and excerpts written by doctor-writers themselves.
Engaging and provocative, philosophical and instructive, intermittently funny and sometimes appalling, this anthology sets out to stimulate and entertain. With an acerbic introduction and witty contextual preface to each account, it will educate both patients and doctors curious to know more about the historical dimensions of medical practice. Armed with a first-hand experience of liberal medicine and knowledge of several languages, Iain Bamforth has scoured the literatures of Europe to provide a well-rounded and cross-cultural sense of what it means to be a doctor entering the twenty-first century.
From the Hardcover edition.
作者簡介
Iain Bamforth is a doctor who has worked across Europe and Australia. His essays and reviews have appeared in a variety of medical and literary publications includingThe Lancet, Times Literary Supplement, London Review of Books, andNew York Times. He is the author of several books of poetry and has received a Scottish Arts Council Book Award and an Eric Gregory Award.
Samuel Beckett was born in Ireland in 1906. His plays Waiting for Godot andEndgame revolutionized modern theater, and his trilogy—Molloy, Mallone Dies, andThe Unnamable—ranks among the major works of twentieth century fiction. He died in Paris in 1989.
Bertolt Brecht (1898–1956) was a German poet, playwright, and theater director. An influential theater practitioner of the 20th century, Brecht made equally significant contributions to dramaturgy and theatrical production, the latter particularly through the seismic impact of the tours undertaken by the Berliner Ensemble—the post-war theater company operated by Brecht and his wife and long-time collaborator, the actress Helene Weigel—with its internationally acclaimed productions.
Anton Chekhov was born on January 29, 1860 in Taganrog, Russia. He graduated from the University of Moscow in 1884. Chekhov died of tuberculosis in Germany on July 14, 1904, shortly after his marriage to actress Olga Knipper, and was buried in Moscow.
Louis-Ferdinand Celine (1894–1961) was a French writer and doctor whose novels are antiheroic visions of human suffering. Accused of collaboration with the Nazis, Celine fled France in 1944 first to Germany and then to Denmark. Condemned by default (1950) in France to one year of imprisonment and declared a national disgrace, Celine returned to France after his pardon in 1951, where he continued to write until his death. His classic books includeJourney to the End of the Night, Death on the Installment Plan, London Bridge, North, Rigadoon, Conversations with Professor Y,Castle to Castle, and Normance.
Charles Dickens (1812–1870) is one of the most acclaimed and popular writers of all time. His many works include the classicsThe Old Curiosity Shop, Oliver Twist, Nicholas Nickleby, Barnaby Rudge, A Christmas Carol, A Tale of Two Cities, David Copperfield, Great Expectations, Bleak House, Hard Times, Our Mutual Friend,The Pickwick Papers and many more.
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1859–1930) is most noted for his Sherlock Holmes detective stories. He was a prolific writer whose other works include a wide range of science fiction stories, historical novels, romances, poetry, and nonfiction.
Gustave Flaubert (1821–80) is considered to be one of the most important French novelists of the nineteenth century. He’s most well known for his novelMadame Bovary, and for his desire to write “a book about nothing,” a novel in which all external elements, especially the presence of the author, have been eliminated, leaving nothing but style itself. Often considered a member of the naturalist school, Flaubert despised categorizations of this sort, and in novels like Bouvard and Pecuchet demonstrates the inaptness of this label. In addition to these two novels, he is also the author ofA Sentimental Education, Salambo, Three Tales, and The Temptation of Saint Anthony.
Nikolai Gogol (1809–1852) was a novelist and political satirist. The author ofDead Souls and The Overcoat, he was one of Russia’s greatest writers.
Franz Kafka (1883–1924) was born of Jewish parents in Prague. Several of his story collections were published in his lifetime and his novels,The Trial, The Castle, and Amerika, were published posthumously by his editor Max Brod.
Novelist, poet, and journalist, <
