Being Ill: Idioms, Registers and Styles

This volume is a collection of studies on the experience of being ill as represented in a diverse range of literary and film works, offered by Polish scholars with an interest in the combination of medical, cultural and social contexts (disease, illness, sickness). The focus is on narrative strategies that condition the idiomatic styles of writing (about) disease. The analyses also cover extra-individual codes for expressing the experience of illness, arising from cultural orders or literary genres. The contributors examine cultural representations of melancholy, depression, Parkinson’s disease and other boundary situations (e.g., mourning or COVID-19 pandemic). With its diversity of study approaches, the book inscribes itself in the widely defined Polish maladic discourse criticism.