Graduation Year
2010
Document Type
Thesis
Degree
M.A.
Degree Granting Department
English
Major Professor
Tova Cooper, Ph.D.
Committee Member
Philip Sipiora, Ph.D.
Committee Member
John N. Huy DC. DACBN
Keywords
Plumbism, Burton, Croton, Aqueduct, Schizophrenia
Abstract
Melville wrote Bartleby the Scrivener as a literary portrayal of the Humoral theory of disease. Virchow disproved that theory five years after the novella was published, suggesting Melville was humanizing an unknown pathology. A clinical assessment of the text reveals low-grade lead poisoning, which best explains the strange behavior, abnormal appearance, and premature death of the character Bartleby as depicted by the author. In conjunction with the textual substantiation, historical evidence indicates that at the time Melville wrote the work, one in ten people he encountered suffered from the effects of the same disease. Informed with the identity of Melville’s unknown pathology, the work can be critically read in terms of the Kubler-Ross Grief Cycle as an archetypal first-person account of a population whose societal norms are disrupted when confronted with the victims of undiagnosed lead poisoning.
Scholar Commons Citation
Bogin, Gerard, "Melville’s Unknown Pathology: The Humoral Theory of Disease and Low Grade Lead Poisoning in Bartleby the Scrivener" (2010). USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations.
https://digitalcommons.usf.edu/etd/3575
