SCAS News - 20 October, 2016
Medicine and the Seven Deadly Sins in the New Book by Pro Futura Fellow Virginia Langum
Virginia Langum's new monograph Medicine and the Seven Deadly Sins in Late Medieval Literature
and Culture (Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), has recently appeared. Langum worked on the book during
her
time in residence at the Collegium in the academic
year 2014-15 and the autumn
of 2015.
In addition
to being a
Pro Futura Scientia Fellow at SCAS, she is Associate Professor of
English
Literature
at Umeå University. She was admitted to the Pro Futura programme in 2013.
ABOUT THE BOOK:
'This book considers how scientists, theologians, priests, and poets
approached the relationship of
the human body and ethics in the later
Middle Ages. Is medicine merely a metaphor for sin? Or can
certain
kinds of bodies physiologically dispose people to be angry, sad, or
greedy? If so, then is it
their fault? Virginia Langum offers an account
of the medical imagery used to describe feelings and
actions in religious
and literary contexts, referencing a variety of behavioral discussions
within medical
contexts. The study draws upon medical and theological
writing for its philosophical basis, and upon
more popular works of religion,
as well as poetry, to show how these themes were articulated, explored,
and questioned more widely in medieval culture'.
