The Portrait of the Artist as a Pathographer: On Writing Illnesses and Illnesses in Writing

Focusing on the various intersections between illness and literature across time and space, the volume seeks to understand how ontological, phenomenological and epistemological experiences of illness have been dealt and represented in literary writings and literary studies. In this volume scholars from across the world have come together to understand how pathological condition of being ill (the sufferers), as well as the pathologists dealing with the ill (the healers and care givers) have shaped literary works. The language of medical science with its jargon and the language of the everyday with its emphasis on utility prove equally insufficient and futile in capturing the pain and suffering of illness. It is this insufficiency and futility that makes us turn towards the works of Joseph Conrad, Samuel Beckett, William Carlos Williams, Virginia Woolf, Kazuo Ishiguro, Miroslav Holub, and to the lesser known to the English literary world, António Lobo Antunes, Yumemakura Baku, Wopko Jensma and Vaslav Nijinsky which have been able to capture the metalanguage of illness and present before us a tradition of ‘writing pain’. With the attempt of expanding the definition of pathography to include those who are on the other side of pain, the essays here have tried to portray the above mentioned pathographers as artists— turning anxiety and suffering of illness into art form. The volume tries to capture this creative aspect of illness.