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This electronic thesis or dissertation has been downloaded from the King’s Research Portal at https://kclpure.kcl.ac.uk/portal/ Reading Cavafy through the medical humanities illness, disease and death Menelaou, Iakovos Awarding institution: King's College London The copyright of this thesis rests with the author and no quotation from it or information derived from it may be published without proper acknowledgement. END USER LICENCE AGREEMENT Unless another licence is stated on the immediately following page this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International licence. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ You are free to copy, distribute and transmit the work Under the following conditions: Attribution: You must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work). Non Commercial: You may not use this work for commercial purposes. No Derivative Works - You may not alter, transform, or build upon this work. Any of these conditions can be waived if you receive permission from the author. Your fair dealings and other rights are in no way affected by the above. Take down policy If you believe that this document breaches copyright please contact [email protected] providing details, and we will remove access to the work immediately and investigate your claim. Download date: 10. Oct. 2021 1 | P a g e Reading Cavafy through the Medical Humanities: Illness, Disease and Death By Iakovos Menelaou King’s College London, 2019 2 | P a g e Abstract: This thesis seeks to break new ground in Modern Greek studies and the medical humanities. A reading of Cavafy’s poetry through the medical humanities is a new approach that sheds light on many of his poems, and provides a new framework for discussing some of the most celebrated aspects of his work. Cavafy’s poems exhibit a broad awareness of medical theories and views of his time, and in turn his writings have something to offer the field of literature and medicine. The introduction includes a brief historical survey of the medical humanities. It also defines ‘additive’ and ‘integrated’ medical humanities and the difference between ‘disease’ and ‘illness’. In addition, it includes some biographical information that show Cavafy’s preoccupation with health issues and medical theories in general. Chapter 1 surveys that death is a prevalent subject in Cavafy, concentrating on death as a result of illness. In Cavafy, death as a result of an unspecified illness attacks everyone: from strong military men to the young. Chapter 2 revolves around the view of old age as a disease. Cavafy, in a number of poems, presents old age not as a life stage, but as a condition. From that respect, he reflects Jacob Hutter’s view that old age is a disease, as expressed in his treatise That Old Age Is Itself a Disease. Chapter 3 focuses on how Cavafy presents dependence as a specific condition rather than a vice or custom. Cavafy explores the consequences of drinking on the individual and shows his knowledge of theories that saw drinking as a condition, like Thomas Trotter’s theory in his treatise An Essay, Medical, Philosophical, and Chemical, on Drunkenness. Chapter 4 reads Cavafy’s homoerotic poems through Richard von Krafft-Ebing’s influential book Psychopathia Sexualis. Krafft-Ebing asserted that homosexuality is a mental illness accompanied by certain symptoms. This view Cavafy explores in his poetry, even if he does not agree with it. The conclusion argues that Cavafy’s poetry has something to offer the field of the medical humanities. 3 | P a g e Acknowledgements: A PhD can be a long and lonely road, where you need the right people to guide and advise you. I would like to thank a number of people I feel lucky I met; before and during my research. Initially, I would like to thank Dr Anthony Hirst, my supervisor at the Queen’s University of Belfast. Dr Hirst taught me the skills a researcher needs. He was the person who strongly encouraged me to apply for a PhD at King’s College London. He also helped me with my application and gave me guidelines for my research proposal. I would like to thank Dr Augustine Casiday, my supervisor at the University of Wales, Trinity Saint David. Dr Casiday explained to me the challenges of a PhD and helped me to see theological aspects of Cavafy’s poetry I could not see before. He also encouraged me to apply at King’s College London and together with Dr Hirst they were my two referees. Of course, I would like to thank Professor David Ricks, my supervisor. He helped me to the utmost to complete this thesis and take it to the level I envisaged when applying for admission. Professor Ricks challenged and guided me throughout my research and his comments were always well-targeted. Especially at the beginning of this research, Professor Ricks helped me to settle on the actual thematology of the thesis and the medical humanities approach, which was an enjoyable journey. As an undergraduate student at the School of Philosophy, University of Ioannina, I remember myself reading and admiring his work; I feel lucky I worked with him and have been supervised by him. I would like also to thank my secondary supervisors, Professor Roderick Beaton and Dr Maria Vaccarella. Through his work, Professor Beaton can inspire any new scholar in the field of Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies. Dr Vaccarella helped me to understand better the field of the medical humanities and she was always willing to propose new sources. Dr Vaccarella helped me to see the connections between Cavafy and the medical humanities and her comments were always helpful and constructive. I would like also to thank George N. Antonakopoulos (Emeritus Professor at the University of Thessaly) who helped me to find information on Cavafy’s cousin (John Cavafy). I would like to thank my home institution, King’s College London, for the support throughout my studies and especially the members of staff at Maughan Library and Weston Education Centre Library (Denmark Hill). Of course I could not forget how useful Wellcome Library was, as there I could find all the sources I needed for my methodology. I spent hours in Wellcome Library and the staff were more than willing to help me with the sources and the special collections. 4 | P a g e Finally, I would like to thank my family in Cyprus for their support and my wife who came with me to London and supported and encouraged me throughout my research. Her support was invaluable. She made me feel throughout the research that I was not alone. 5 | P a g e To Christina Amelia Menelaou 6 | P a g e Table of Contents Introduction (page 14) 1) The medical humanities in history 2) Cavafy in between ‘additive’ and ‘integrated’ medical humanities 3) Cavafy’s obsession with health and well-being 4) The distinction between disease and illness 5) Medical developments in the nineteenth century and their reflection in literature Chapter 1 Death from an unspecified illness (page 43) 1.1) Introduction 1.2) Illness of soldiers 1.3) Illness of young men 1.4) Youth, erotic passion and death 1.5) Conclusions Chapter 2 Old age: life stage or illness? (page 82) 2.1) Introduction 2.2) The representation of old age as a disease 2.3) Symptomatology of old age 2.4) Poetry as antidote to age 7 | P a g e 2.5) Conclusions Chapter 3 Dependency: alcoholism understood as disease (page 113) 3.1) Introduction 3.2) Alcohol and eroticism 3.3) Symptomatology of alcoholism 3.4) Conclusions Chapter 4 Homosexuality and the discourse of medicalisation (page 152) 4.1) Introduction 4.2) Homosexuality and well-being 4.3) The innateness of homosexuality 4.4) Homosexuality, young men and death 4.5) Sickliness and stigmatisation of homosexuality 4.6) Symptomatology of homosexuality 4.7) Conclusions Conclusions (page 206) Bibliography (page 209) 8 | P a g e Preface In the Greek-speaking world not everyone knows about poetry. However, almost everyone knows Cavafy. His poetry is part of the national curriculum in secondary education and pupils or students are exposed relatively early to the magic of his poems. He is a poet widely read and discussed outside Greece too, and the analysis of his poetry never reaches an end. Yet there is always something new to say. Cavafy’s preoccupation with the fragility of the human condition, and his attention to illness, disease and death, old age, alcohol consumption and homosexuality continue to attract and challenge the reader. In turning anew to these themes, the thesis draws on the medical humanities to provide a new and integrated framework. I shall argue that turning to the medical humanities provides us with a new perspective and that Cavafy’s poetry can be the object of investigation not only of scholars in literary studies and world literature, but also a tool of interpretation for medical practitioners and researchers in the history of medicine. In the introduction, I discuss the development of the medical humanities through history. Although the term ‘medical humanities’ was coined in the United States in 1948, the medical humanities followed a different route in the different parts of the world. For example, in the UK the medical humanities developed in the 1990s, while in other countries, like Greece, is still in an embryonic stage. I also discuss how Cavafy can be placed between ‘additive’ and ‘integrated’ medical humanities.