Medicine and Metaphor: The Poetics of Disability and Environment & The Poetry Collection ‘Gut Feeling’

Hurst, Lucy Elliott (2024) Medicine and Metaphor: The Poetics of Disability and Environment & The Poetry Collection ‘Gut Feeling’. Doctoral thesis, York St John University.

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Abstract

The creative portion of this thesis is an experimental collection of poetry titled Gut Feeling. In this collection, I explore my own disability, its complexities, and its intra-activity with environment as a form of creative writing as research. Thematically, I discuss my own lived experiences with disability, medical consent and autonomy, contagion, the impact of covid-19 on extremely clinically vulnerable people, and the boundaries of the body. I do this through experimental forms and found materials.

In the critical portion, I expand on the work of disability and pain theorists, Scarry and Sontag, and explore ways that figurative language can enable discussion of disability and intra-activity in environment—complex topics which often evade symbolic and medical language. Within disability studies, disability is regarded as being influenced by biological, social, and environmental factors. Yet, environmental factors are often overlooked and overshadowed, leading to a distorted understanding of the condition in question.

I compare two texts: the contemporary experimental poetry collection, Love Minus Love by Wayne Holloway-Smith, and the popular medical textbook, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 5th ed, text revision (DSM-5-TR). I analyse what is implied to the reader regarding the environmental factors which are attributed to causing and exacerbating obsessive-compulsive disorder, and the uncomfortable relationships that are often created with the nonhuman (i.e., fear of bacteria). I will be analysing the two texts in the same way, considering their language choices and modes, their formatting, and performing an ecocritical reading, whilst acknowledging their different contexts and purposes. In an innovative and interdisciplinary literary reading of the DSM-5-TR, I consider how different modes of language enable or hinder discussion on the environmental factors of OCD.

Item Type:	Thesis (Doctoral)
Status:	Published
Subjects:	P Language and Literature > PN Literature (General)
School/Department:	School of Humanities
URI:	https://ray.yorksj.ac.uk/id/eprint/9683