The Wounded Storyteller
Body, Illness, and Ethics
University of Chicago Press, 1995
Cloth: 978-0-226-25992-5 | Paper: 978-0-226-25993-2 | Electronic: 978-0-226-26003-7
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226260037.001.0001
Cloth: 978-0-226-25992-5 | Paper: 978-0-226-25993-2 | Electronic: 978-0-226-26003-7
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226260037.001.0001
AVAILABLE FROM
This title is no longer available from this publisher at this time. To let the publisher know you are interested in the title, please email bv-help@uchicago.edu.
ABOUT THIS BOOKTABLE OF CONTENTS
ABOUT THIS BOOK
In At the Will of the Body, Arthur Frank told the story of his own illnesses, heart attack and cancer. That book ended by describing the existence of a "remission society," whose members all live with some form of illness or disability. The Wounded Storyteller is their collective portrait.
Ill people are more than victims of disease or patients of medicine; they are wounded storytellers. People tell stories to make sense of their suffering; when they turn their diseases into stories, they find healing.
Drawing on the work of authors such as Oliver Sacks, Anatole Broyard, Norman Cousins, and Audre Lorde, as well as from people he met during the years he spent among different illness groups, Frank recounts a stirring collection of illness stories, ranging from the well-known—Gilda Radner's battle with ovarian cancer—to the private testimonials of people with cancer, chronic fatigue syndrome, and disabilties. Their stories are more than accounts of personal suffering: they abound with moral choices and point to a social ethic.
Frank identifies three basic narratives of illness in restitution, chaos, and quest. Restitution narratives anticipate getting well again and give prominence to the technology of cure. In chaos narratives, illness seems to stretch on forever, with no respite or redeeming insights. Quest narratives are about finding that insight as illness is transformed into a means for the ill person to become someone new.
Ill people are more than victims of disease or patients of medicine; they are wounded storytellers. People tell stories to make sense of their suffering; when they turn their diseases into stories, they find healing.
Drawing on the work of authors such as Oliver Sacks, Anatole Broyard, Norman Cousins, and Audre Lorde, as well as from people he met during the years he spent among different illness groups, Frank recounts a stirring collection of illness stories, ranging from the well-known—Gilda Radner's battle with ovarian cancer—to the private testimonials of people with cancer, chronic fatigue syndrome, and disabilties. Their stories are more than accounts of personal suffering: they abound with moral choices and point to a social ethic.
Frank identifies three basic narratives of illness in restitution, chaos, and quest. Restitution narratives anticipate getting well again and give prominence to the technology of cure. In chaos narratives, illness seems to stretch on forever, with no respite or redeeming insights. Quest narratives are about finding that insight as illness is transformed into a means for the ill person to become someone new.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Preface
Acknowledgments
One. When Bodies Need Voices
Two. The Body's Problem with Illness
Three. Illness as a Call for Stories
Four. The Restitution Narrative: Illness in the Imaginary
Five. The Chaos Narrative: Mute Illness
Six. The Quest Narrative: Illness and the Communicative Body
Seven. Testimony
Eight. The Wound as Half Opening
Notes
Index