Strange Cases

<p><em>Strange Cases</em> is the story of the mutual influence of the case history </p><p>and the British novel during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. </p><p>Fictions from Defoe's <em>Roxana</em> to James's <em>The Turn of the Screw</em> and </p><p>case histories from George Cheyne's to Sigmund Freud's have found </p><p>narrative impetus in pathology. The writer of a case history faces a </p><p>rhetorical bind unique to the human sciences: the need to display the </p><p>acumen of a scientist and the sympathy warranted to the suffering </p><p>patient. Repeatedly case historians justify their publicizing of </p><p>extreme often morbid or perverse states of mind and body by </p><p>appealing to readers to take pity on patients and to recognize the </p><p>narrative as a vital social document. Diagnosis and sympathy explicit </p><p>rhetorical modes in case histories operate implicitly in novels </p><p>shaping reader-identification. While these two narrative forms set out </p><p>to fulfill an Enlightenment drive to classify and explain they also </p><p>raise social and epistemological questions that challenge some of the </p><p>Enlightenment's most cherished ideals including faith in reason the </p><p>perfectibility of humankind and the stability of truth.</p>