Biomedical discourse and the discourse of the lifeworld in contemporary New Zealand poetry on a medical theme : a thesis submitted to Massey University, Albany, in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in English
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Date
2015
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Massey University
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Abstract
The critical component of this thesis investigates autobiographical medical poetry
written from the perspective of doctor, patient and parent in the context of a
growing global interest in the relationship between medicine and poetry, and in the
medical humanities. Its focus is the poets’ use of medical discourse and the discourse
of the personal, social world, and the ways in which their poems often echo the work
of sociologists, revealing an inequity in doctor-patient relationships. The research
also reveals a bias among some reviewers towards the poetry of doctors, and a
contrasting tendency to accuse the patient-poets of solipsism, or the inability to go
beyond self-referential anecdote. In response to such reviews, the critical component
analyses the ways in which the poems have been carefully crafted, with attention to
the blending or juxtaposition of biomedical and lifeworld discourses to a polemical
end, moving the personal to the universal, and calling for more individualised patient
care. In this way, the poetry of all three groups is found to be reflective of the
contemporary socio-cultural backdrop of narrative medicine and medical
humanities programmes around the world. The creative component, a book-length
manuscript of poems called “Family History,” explores the relationship between
biomedical and lifeworld discourses in the light of the study undertaken in the
critical component and also in response to the personal medical experience of the
author and her family.
Description
Listed in 2015 Dean's List of Exceptional Theses
Keywords
Medicine in literature, Biomedical discourse, New Zealand poetry, History and criticism, Medicine, Poetry, Research Subject Categories::HUMANITIES and RELIGION::Aesthetic subjects::Literature, Dean's List of Exceptional Theses