Leprosy and Identity in the Middle Ages: From England to the Mediterranean ed. by Elma Brenner and François-Olivier Touati (review)

IF 0.2 4区 文学 0 LITERATURE
Kaitlin Sager
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Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2021. 424 pp. Hardcover, $140.00. <p>Elma Brenner and François-Olivier Touati's edited volume, <em>Leprosy and Identity in the Middle Ages: From England to the Mediterranean</em>, is an invaluable addition to the body of work on leprosy in the medieval period. Encompassing the overlapping disciplines of history of medicine, <strong>[End Page 225]</strong> cultural history, art history, as well as new findings in bioarchaeology, osteology, and paleopathology owing to innovations in ancient DNA (aDNA) research, this book successfully bridges the gap between the sciences and the humanities in disease studies. By focusing on identity as the central concept in their study, the contributors to this volume manage to dispel oft-repeated myths about medieval leprosy in Western Europe, especially the idea that its sufferers were subjected to complete isolation and institutional neglect and had to resort to mendicancy to survive. With a focus on both institutional and non-institutional constructions of identity around leprosy, the book not only addresses those who suffer from the infection, but also the communities with whom they interacted and to which they claimed membership. <em>Leprosy and Identity</em> is an essential read not only for scholars of the Middle Ages, but for anyone interested in the social history of disease. Its thoroughly researched chapters by scholars from a wide variety of disciplines help to make sense of an illness whose sufferers have been heavily stigmatized and historiographically misrepresented as social pariahs. This research reintegrates leprosy sufferers into complex social and institutional contexts, complicating and problematizing the simplified historical narrative of leprosy as a taboo disease which resulted in social isolation and rejection.</p> <p>Contributors to the volume address leprosy in many different geographical and chronological contexts but remain in conversation with one another by focusing on institutional settings, material histories, and language to better understand the experiences and identities of communities affected by leprosy. The book is comprised of five parts, with one to three chapters in each section. Part 1, \"Approaching Leprosy and Identity,\" contains broad surveys based on geographical, historical, and archaeological data, helping to ground the reader in the historical and religious myths around the origins and initial spread of the infection. In chapter 3, for example, Damien Jeanne applies René Girard's scapegoat theory and analyzes Latin terminologies in Thomas Becket's miracles to better understand the dichotomy between leper as scapegoat and leper as sanctified in Catholic thought. In Part 2, \"Within the Leprosy Hospital: Between Segregation and Isolation,\" scholars make use of both of documentary evidence and archaeological findings from <em>leprosaria</em>, analyzing economic and social aspects of institutional life to determine how these groups functioned on a day-to-day basis. Elma Brenner's chapter, \"Diet as a Marker of Identity in the Leprosy Hospitals in Medieval Northern France,\" provides a fascinating slice of daily life in the <em>leprosarium</em> through the exploration of food-sharing <strong>[End Page 226]</strong> rituals and how they connect to religious and social ideals of charity and hospitality. Part 3 then shifts to leprous communities outside of the institution. Lucy Barnhouse and Luke Demaitre's chapters use linguistic and visual analysis to demonstrate how people living with leprosy in the Middle Ages were perceived and described by those around them. This strategy of linguistic analysis is continued in Part 4, where Anna M. Peterson analyzes terminologies in Latin, Occitan, and Italian used to refer to leprosy to get a better sense of how these communities were regarded in these thriving medieval cities.</p> <p>This volume ends with \"Post-medieval Perspectives\" by Kathleen Vongasthorn and Magnus Vollset, in which they argue that the resurgence of scholarly interest in medieval leprosy in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries carried with it the ideological aim of justifying European colonization and promoting civilizing religious missions in the tropics. While this chapter is rich and fascinating to read, the historiographical complexity of medieval leprosy and its relationship to colonization warrants more than one...</p> </p>","PeriodicalId":44538,"journal":{"name":"LITERATURE AND MEDICINE","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2000,"publicationDate":"2024-08-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"LITERATURE AND MEDICINE","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1353/lm.2024.a935843","RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"0","JCRName":"LITERATURE","Score":null,"Total":0}
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Abstract

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

Reviewed by:

  • Leprosy and Identity in the Middle Ages: From England to the Mediterranean ed. by Elma Brenner and François-Olivier Touati
  • Kaitlin Sager (bio)
Elma Brenner and François-Olivier Touati, eds. Leprosy and Identity in the Middle Ages: From England to the Mediterranean. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2021. 424 pp. Hardcover, $140.00.

Elma Brenner and François-Olivier Touati's edited volume, Leprosy and Identity in the Middle Ages: From England to the Mediterranean, is an invaluable addition to the body of work on leprosy in the medieval period. Encompassing the overlapping disciplines of history of medicine, [End Page 225] cultural history, art history, as well as new findings in bioarchaeology, osteology, and paleopathology owing to innovations in ancient DNA (aDNA) research, this book successfully bridges the gap between the sciences and the humanities in disease studies. By focusing on identity as the central concept in their study, the contributors to this volume manage to dispel oft-repeated myths about medieval leprosy in Western Europe, especially the idea that its sufferers were subjected to complete isolation and institutional neglect and had to resort to mendicancy to survive. With a focus on both institutional and non-institutional constructions of identity around leprosy, the book not only addresses those who suffer from the infection, but also the communities with whom they interacted and to which they claimed membership. Leprosy and Identity is an essential read not only for scholars of the Middle Ages, but for anyone interested in the social history of disease. Its thoroughly researched chapters by scholars from a wide variety of disciplines help to make sense of an illness whose sufferers have been heavily stigmatized and historiographically misrepresented as social pariahs. This research reintegrates leprosy sufferers into complex social and institutional contexts, complicating and problematizing the simplified historical narrative of leprosy as a taboo disease which resulted in social isolation and rejection.

Contributors to the volume address leprosy in many different geographical and chronological contexts but remain in conversation with one another by focusing on institutional settings, material histories, and language to better understand the experiences and identities of communities affected by leprosy. The book is comprised of five parts, with one to three chapters in each section. Part 1, "Approaching Leprosy and Identity," contains broad surveys based on geographical, historical, and archaeological data, helping to ground the reader in the historical and religious myths around the origins and initial spread of the infection. In chapter 3, for example, Damien Jeanne applies René Girard's scapegoat theory and analyzes Latin terminologies in Thomas Becket's miracles to better understand the dichotomy between leper as scapegoat and leper as sanctified in Catholic thought. In Part 2, "Within the Leprosy Hospital: Between Segregation and Isolation," scholars make use of both of documentary evidence and archaeological findings from leprosaria, analyzing economic and social aspects of institutional life to determine how these groups functioned on a day-to-day basis. Elma Brenner's chapter, "Diet as a Marker of Identity in the Leprosy Hospitals in Medieval Northern France," provides a fascinating slice of daily life in the leprosarium through the exploration of food-sharing [End Page 226] rituals and how they connect to religious and social ideals of charity and hospitality. Part 3 then shifts to leprous communities outside of the institution. Lucy Barnhouse and Luke Demaitre's chapters use linguistic and visual analysis to demonstrate how people living with leprosy in the Middle Ages were perceived and described by those around them. This strategy of linguistic analysis is continued in Part 4, where Anna M. Peterson analyzes terminologies in Latin, Occitan, and Italian used to refer to leprosy to get a better sense of how these communities were regarded in these thriving medieval cities.

This volume ends with "Post-medieval Perspectives" by Kathleen Vongasthorn and Magnus Vollset, in which they argue that the resurgence of scholarly interest in medieval leprosy in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries carried with it the ideological aim of justifying European colonization and promoting civilizing religious missions in the tropics. While this chapter is rich and fascinating to read, the historiographical complexity of medieval leprosy and its relationship to colonization warrants more than one...

中世纪的麻风病与身份:Elma Brenner 和 François-Olivier Touati 编辑的《从英格兰到地中海》(评论)
以下是内容的简要摘录,以代替摘要:评论者 中世纪的麻风病与身份:Elma Brenner 和 François-Olivier Touati 编辑的《从英格兰到地中海》 Kaitlin Sager (bio) Elma Brenner 和 François-Olivier Touati 编辑。中世纪的麻风病与身份:从英格兰到地中海。曼彻斯特:曼彻斯特大学出版社,2021 年。424 pp.精装,140.00 美元。Elma Brenner 和 François-Olivier Touati 编辑的《中世纪的麻风病与身份认同》是对中世纪研究的宝贵补充:从英格兰到地中海》是对中世纪麻风病研究成果的宝贵补充。本书涵盖了医学史、[第225页完]文化史、艺术史等相互重叠的学科,以及由于古代 DNA(aDNA)研究的创新而在生物考古学、骨学和古病理学方面取得的新发现,成功地弥合了疾病研究中科学与人文之间的鸿沟。通过将身份认同作为研究的核心概念,本卷的撰稿人设法打破了关于西欧中世纪麻风病的屡次重复的神话,尤其是关于麻风病人完全与世隔绝、被机构忽视、不得不靠乞讨为生的观点。本书关注麻风病的制度性和非制度性身份建构,不仅探讨了麻风病人,还探讨了与麻风病人交往的社区以及麻风病人声称自己是麻风病人的社区。麻风病与身份》不仅是中世纪学者的必读书,也是任何对疾病社会史感兴趣的人的必读书。书中各章节由来自不同学科的学者进行了深入研究,有助于读者理解麻风病,因为麻风病人一直被严重污名化,并在史学上被歪曲为社会贱民。这项研究将麻风病人重新融入复杂的社会和制度环境中,使麻风病作为一种禁忌疾病导致社会隔离和排斥的简化历史叙事复杂化和问题化。本书的撰稿人探讨了麻风病在许多不同的地理和年代背景下的情况,但通过关注制度环境、物质历史和语言,更好地理解麻风病人的经历和身份,从而保持了彼此间的对话。本书由五个部分组成,每个部分有一至三章。第一部分 "麻风病与身份 "包含基于地理、历史和考古数据的广泛调查,帮助读者了解麻风病的起源和最初传播的历史和宗教神话。例如,在第 3 章中,达米安-让纳应用了勒内-吉拉德的替罪羊理论,并分析了托马斯-贝克特神迹中的拉丁术语,从而更好地理解了天主教思想中麻风病人作为替罪羊与麻风病人作为圣人的对立。在第二部分 "麻风病院内部:在隔离与孤立之间",学者们利用麻风病院的文献证据和考古发现,分析了麻风病院生活的经济和社会方面,以确定这些群体的日常运作方式。埃尔马-布伦纳(Elma Brenner)的 "中世纪法国北部麻风病院中作为身份标志的饮食 "一章,通过探讨食物分享 [第 226 页完] 仪式以及这些仪式如何与慈善和好客的宗教和社会理想相联系,为麻风病院的日常生活提供了一个精彩的切片。然后,第三部分转向麻风病院外的麻风病人社区。露西-巴恩豪斯(Lucy Barnhouse)和卢克-德梅特尔(Luke Demaitre)的章节使用语言和视觉分析来展示中世纪的麻风病人是如何被周围的人看待和描述的。安娜-M-彼得森(Anna M. Peterson)在第 4 部分中继续采用这种语言分析策略,分析了拉丁语、奥克语和意大利语中用于指代麻风病的术语,以便更好地了解这些群体在这些繁荣的中世纪城市中是如何被看待的。凯瑟琳-冯加斯索恩(Kathleen Vongasthorn)和马格努斯-沃尔斯特(Magnus Vollset)撰写的 "中世纪后的视角 "是本卷的结尾,他们认为,十九世纪和二十世纪学术界对中世纪麻风病的重新关注带有意识形态的目的,即为欧洲殖民和促进热带地区文明化的宗教使命辩护。虽然本章内容丰富,读来引人入胜,但中世纪麻风病的历史学复杂性及其与殖民化的关系值得一读。
本文章由计算机程序翻译,如有差异,请以英文原文为准。
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来源期刊
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期刊介绍: Literature and Medicine is a journal devoted to exploring interfaces between literary and medical knowledge and understanding. Issues of illness, health, medical science, violence, and the body are examined through literary and cultural texts. Our readership includes scholars of literature, history, and critical theory, as well as health professionals.
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