Editor's Column

Al Editor's Column The essays in our first non-thematic volume are revealing in several respects. The quality of the essays selected for inclusion reflects the growing interest, and the substantive work being conducted by a diversity of scholars, in the emerging interdisciplinary field of literature and medicine. When we announced an open volume, we had no idea what kind of essays we might receive in response. When we looked at the handful of essays our reviewers had recommended for publication out of the numerous ones submitted for consideration, we discovered that these essays formed a pattern that suggested an immediate organizational plan for the volume and that might also give some insights into the most engaging aspects of the field at the present time. In general, from a variety of methodological approaches , the essays included here address themselves to issues of theory, interpretation, and application. For the first time, moreover, we publish an essay that approaches literature and medicine from linguistic perspectives, and we include a paper on drama and film. The volume has a tripartite structure. The first four essays provide theoretical approaches to the field. The bulk of the volume contains six essays that explore themes and issues of literature and medicine in the works of particular authors; halfway among these six essays is an original sonnet. Found in the last section are two review essays and two book reviews. Drawing upon his experience in the interdisciplinary field of literature and religion, Stephen Daniel offers several recommendations and caveats for the developing field of literature and medicine. Using linguistic and medical models, Bruce Psaty analyzes literature and medicine as a critical discourse. In his essay, Philip Mosley contends that certain literary texts can have medical value just as certain medical texts may have literary value. In their study, James Terry and Edward Gogel develop the analogy between diagnosing a patient and interpreting a poem. Winfried Schleiner examines Prospero in the context of the Renaissance medical understanding of a therapist, while Barbara Wright attempts to account for Tennyson's addition of the weird seizures in The Princess in the light of Tennyson's and the Victorians' view of epilepsy. Considering despair and suicide as medical issues, Barbara Gates analyzes the literary EDITOR'S COLUMN responses of Carlyle, Mill, and Nightingale to the threat of self-destruction . Carole Fitzgerald Hayes's sonnet is accompanied by an illustration of the cover of the otolaryngological textbook that inspired it. James Cowan traces the pharmakos figure in several modern American stories involving physicians and patients, and George Monteiro shows how Fitzgerald transformed his own experience with alcoholism into an artful short story. James Welsh evaluates the artistic effectiveness of the portrayal of psychiatry in the stage and screen versions of Suddenly Last Summer, Agnes of God, and Equus. In his review essay, Hans-Peter Breuer, an expert on Darwinism and Victorian letters, provides a learned context for considering Peter Morton's The Vital Science: Biology and the Literary Imagination. Currently working on his own scholarly study on pain, David Morris offers an informed and illuminating perspective on Elaine Scarry's controversial The Body in Pain. The volume concludes with two reviews. Roger Cox evaluates Meyers's book on disease in the novel, and Charles Anderson discusses Richard Selzer's latest book of stories and essays. D. Heyward Brock ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I am indebted to my fellow associate editors for their support and especially to Anne Hudson Jones for her wise counsel. Were it not for the expertise in word processing of my secretary, Suzanne Potts, this manuscript would never have been completed. I am particularly grateful to Maria Frawley for her untiring research and editorial assistance. For his very special help, we thank Norman Cousins ...