June 17, 2013

Ever So 'Umble: Uriah Heep and 8 other Dickensian characters with a medical record.

Dickens' writing.
I found an interesting slideshow on the online Encyclopaedia Brittanica, about Charles Dickens and his penchant for inflicting various symptoms upon his characters...

"English novelist Charles Dickens had a knack for expertly portraying the symptoms of medical conditions. He also had a tendency to slip those descriptions into his works in subtle terms, such that historians and physicians have made it something of a hobby to interpret them medically and attempt to diagnose afflicted characters. In some cases, Dickens’s descriptions actually predated those offered by medical doctors, revealing his skill for observation. "Dickensian diagnoses" ascribed to nine of the novelist’s characters are explored in this list." - Kara Rogers

You can read the article here - meanwhile I am going to start reading Great Expectations...

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

That was a really neat list- I haven't read an awful lot of Dickinson myself, so I didn't recognise all of the characters mentioned, but it would be really interesting to go back when I know a few more of them. I found the article about the character with Dwarfism to be particularly interesting.
Thanks for sharing!

Other Posts you might Like

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...