Romanticism, Medicine, and the Natural Supernatural by Gavin Budge (review)

Romanticism, Medicine, and the Natural Supernatural analyses the key Romantic literary themes of visions and perception, and hallucinations and spectres, through the lens of Romantic era medical discourse. Focusing on the prevalence of the nervous and digestive system as of key importance in early nineteenth-century medical discourse, Budge also shows a strong awareness of the wider field of research in Romantic medicine, evaluating the work of, among others, Hermione De Almeida and Sharon Ruston, and setting out his own task for this study in persuasive terms. Budge identifies apparitions and spectral visions as a key element of Romanticism, and, influenced by Derrida’s deconstructionist approach, discusses the concept of poetry and the mind as not separate but asserting that, to Romantic writers, the lines between them are blurred.

Chapter 1 critiques Terry Castle’s psychoanalytic reading of Anne Radcliffe’s Mysteries of Udolpho, and instead uses the Romantic conception of the nervous system to analyse the text. Utilising a historicist approach, Budge positions Radcliffe in late eighteenth-century medical spheres, and discusses the physiological effect that literature – and the sublime – has on the nervous system. Intriguingly, Budge also teases out the link between political radicalism, print culture, and spectres in a persuasive examination of Burkean ideas. The chapter concludes with the convincing assertion that Radcliffe required her readers to diagnose and control an excessive appetite for the marvellous.

Chapter 2 analyses the Victorian reception and construction of Wordsworth and the concept of ‘healthy’ literature. Budge also places Wordsworth in the context of Brunonian medical theory, which focuses on the under or overstimulation of the nervous system as the cause of sickness. Budge examines the ways in which poetry could be offered as a medical stimulant, which feeds the soul and not the sensations, denying potentially the dangerous concept of Materialism in literature. This chapter points to the example that woman’s state of mind during pregnancy could alter her baby, again using the idea that the imagination can have a physical effect on the body.

In chapter 3, Budge moves from ‘healthy’ literature to ‘unhealthy’ poetry, with Coleridge and the digestive system as the topics of discussion. Vitalism, the theory that life is dependent on a mysterious principle or power separate from the physical body, is linked to digestion using the work of the surgeon John Hunter and endowing the problem of indigestion with further significance. The narrative then moves to metaphor and its role in philosophy and the imagination.

Chapter 4 repositions Harriet Martineau as a Romantic writer, who is concerned with spectres and apparitions, and recovers her novel Deerbrook to critical attention, reading the text in terms of a regulation of the self and also of political relationships. Characters demonstrate self-control over, or else abandonment to, their nervous irritability, and this irritability is associated with religion in order to promote the authority of Unitarianism. Here Budge first touches on issues of gender that will also be discussed in the following chapter: the use of marginalised figures in the text has feminist implications, he convincingly explains.

In chapter 5, Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin is examined in light of the Romantic distinction between the healthy imagination and bodily morbidity. Budge also explores the connection between the institution of slavery and nervous irritability, arguing that Stowe’s implication is that Uncle Tom’s passivity is an incarnation of the transcendent authority of the bible.

Chapter 6 posits the Pre-Raphaelites as the ‘bodily spectre which haunts claims to Romantic vision’. Positioning the Pre-Raphaelites as outsiders, ideas of the ‘health’ or ‘sickness’ of creative work are once again discussed as sections of canvas completed in minute detail without consideration of the whole are described by critics as symptomatic of mental illness. Authoritative perception is challenged by paintings that confuse perspective and scale.

Overall, Romanticism, Medicine, and the Natural Supernatural assesses a wide range of Romantic era writings in light of contemporary medical discourse. Focusing on...