Date of Award
8-2016
Degree Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Arts
Department
English
Program
English (MA)
First Advisor/Chairperson
Dr. Russell Prather
Abstract
This project examines José Saramago’s Blindness (1996) in the context of two other narratives focused on plagues and epidemics – Daniel Defoe’s A Journal of the Plague Year (1722) and Albert Camus’ The Plague (1947) – each written at different points in time during the development of clinical medicine as chronicled by Michel Foucault’s Birth of the Clinic. The paper draws heavily upon Foucault’s work on clinical medicine, as well as a number of different theories of medical history, government policy, and cultural attitudes towards health and illness. The goal of the project is twofold: first, to examine how the traditional elements in narratives of plague interact with and change in the presence of the relatively new phenomenon of clinical medicine, and second, to understand how Saramago’s Blindness reveals and critiques these changes via a term I dub post-clinical. This demonstrates the ability of literary plague narratives to both understand and critique the medical industry at large.
Recommended Citation
Ftacek, Matthew J., "Blind but Seeing: Post-clinical Medicine in Jose Saramago's Blindness" (2016). All NMU Master's Theses. 101.
https://commons.nmu.edu/theses/101
Access Type
Open Access
Included in
History of Science, Technology, and Medicine Commons, Literature in English, Anglophone outside British Isles and North America Commons, Literature in English, British Isles Commons