Khandakar Shahin Ahmed
Assistant Professor, Department of English, Dibrugarh University. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0482-4835. Email: shahenahmed252@gmail.com
Volume 13, Number 2, 2021 I Full Text PDF
DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v13n2.08
Abstract
Understanding of disease is not merely confined to the pathological perception of the somatic symptoms. Instead, a society’s understanding and management of disease may necessarily also take recourse to ideas referring outside and beyond the human body. The explanation of the plague in early modern England, an era marked by the rapid recurrence of the epidemic, is a notable event in this regard. The plague-ridden body of the early modern times is located in a state of pre-medicalization of the human body, and in the absence of a medicalized narrative, the understanding of the epidemic is not based on the somatic paradigm. The incipient state of the medical study precipitates the ground for understanding the epidemic in the light of religious discourse. From a reading of Thomas Nashe’s “A Litany in a Time of Plague” and Thomas Dekker’s London Looke Backe it can be deciphered that the plague-infected body is perceived as a site of divine justice. In interpreting the epidemic as vengeful God’s rage inflicted upon the sinful humanity, the early modern explanation disembodies the diseased body from its somatic dimension. In doing so it resurfaces the problematic dichotomies of body and soul, medical science and religion. In taking cognizance of the fact that the understanding of a disease is largely determined by the socio-cultural ‘constructs’ of the disease, this paper, through a reading of the above-mentioned works, attempts to explore how the diseased body is caught in a complex network of contesting ideas and beliefs in early modern England.
Keywords: epidemic, somatic, medicalization, gaze