PubMed Health⌕ Search

SEARCH · PubMed Health

Results for “LITERATURE, MODERN”

Explore indexed PubMed citations for clinical trials, systematic reviews and public health research. Read source abstracts and follow each citation to its original PubMed record.

Quote a phrase for an exact phrase match. Source license links do not imply unrestricted reuse.

At least 361 records · Page 20Linked to original sources

S. Weir Mitchell's prose and poetry on the American Civil War.

The prose and poetry of S. Weir Mitchell (1829-1914)--related to the American Civil War--encompass a very significant portion of his non-medical writings. The Civil War, more than any other single event, shaped his future career as one of the founders of American neurology. Indeed, it should not be surprising how the war was also such a driving force in his non-medical writings. His novels, once widely read, now are scarcely noted. His accounts of the social, political and economic events of the Civil War are of historical interest to students of the period. Neuroscientists as a group, like others, are apt to be unfamiliar with these writings, with the possible exception of "The Case of George Dedlow." A major purpose of this essay is to introduce readers, especially neuroscientists, to Weir Mitchell's fictional works in which neurological cases so often appear. One appreciates more the medical aspects of his novels, written as they were by a first-hand observer. His non-medical writings, poetry and prose, are to a large extent timeless and can be appreciated by today's readers.

Drama↗

Bloomsday 100: the making of a literary legend.

OBJECTIVE: As a background to the centenary of Bloomsday, to explore the circumstances in which James Joyce wrote "Ulysses", noting the autobiographical elements and unique style, including the stream-of-consciousness technique that depicted the inner life of the characters. Selected quotations are used to illustrate these points. Joyce wanted to show that the epic and the heroic is in our lives every day. CONCLUSIONS: "Ulysses" defined the literary consciousness of the 20th century. By basing the novel about a day in the life of three ordinary characters on Homer's epic account of an 18 year voyage, Joyce re-established the link between 20th century consciousness and classical times.

Anniversaries and Special Events↗

Meeting the dark: autobiography in Hawthorne's unfinished tales.

This essay discusses the autobiographical implications of Nathaniel Hawthorne's last, unfinished tales. Biographical documents, as well as the tales, demonstrate that Hawthorne's personal condition shaped the characters and ideas in his fiction, particularly the aged protagonist, the meditations on old age and death, and the quest for immortality. The conflict between the moral vision in the tales and his personal attitude toward old age and death caused creative difficulties that he could not overcome.

Aged↗

Faustian phenomena: teleology in Goethe's interpretation of plants and animals.

J.W. von Goethe was a daring and wide-ranging biologist as well as a great playwright. His work was a whole: for him, theory and theatre were both based on keen observation of life. Even 'Faustian' striving, the blind upward urge of life, can be found in significant details of organisms and their evolution, according to Goethe. Such observations cannot be dismissed as sheer poetry. On the contrary, his teleology provides a broad empirical background for the organismic approach in bio-medical science, while exposing inconsistencies in strict reductionist doctrines.

Animal Population Groups↗

Philosophy, literature, and ethics: let the engagement begin.

The goal is to isolate points of philosophical interest in the preceding articles on narrative medical ethics in order to focus subsequent dialogue between the two disciplines. Ethics is an enterprise that has over the centuries developed a somewhat malleable structure, comprising characteristics, methods, lines of reasoning, rules, principles, assumptions, and arguments. This structure provides the framework within which many disciplines contribute to ethics through the exercise of their particular interests, skills, and methods. Challenging or changing the structural components requires arguments of a traditional sort appropriate to the discipline of ethics. Three tenets are proposed as comprising the "received view" or credo of the literature and ethics movement. Each is examined. Then the individual articles in this issue are explored to the end of ferreting out points that would be fruitful points of discussion between philosophy and literature folks pursuing their mutual interest in ethics.

Ethical Analysis↗