Invited Talk: George Crabbe’s Medical Realism

Abstract

George Crabbe’s early experience as an apothecary apprentice and practising doctor contributes a sense of medical realism to his work. Crabbe’s literary preoccupation with medicine displays sensitivity to the British medical reform in the late eighteenth century, when practical expertise and clinical training gained importance over theoretical and classical knowledge. While extensive scholarship (Sigworth, 1965; Nelson, 1976; McGann, 1981; Edwards, 1987; Whitehead, 1989; 1995) has been conducted on Crabbe’s realism, none of these studies have associated such unique writing style with his medical understanding. 

More than twenty years ago, cardiac surgeon Lawrence Zaroff’s unpublished dissertation on Crabbe’s poetry and eighteenth-century medicine recognises the significance of Crabbe’s work in formulating a medical history of training, theory, diagnosis, and treatment. There is, however, no full consideration of how medical ideas and thinking are conveyed through Crabbe’s poetic practice and technique, and how a reading of Crabbe’s medical discourse would promote a deeper understanding of his theories of poetry and poetics. The principal aim of this talk is to recover a sense of poetic realism that is shaped by Crabbe’s experience as a medical apprentice and practitioner, and to examine the influence of these medical-scientific training and knowledge on his poetic theory and practice. With reference to his concept of health and disease, and his social critique of public health, this talk proposes that a study of Crabbe’s medical reference would provide a renewed approach to the characteristics and purpose of his realism, as well as the connection between medical vision and poetic philosophy in his work.