Disease Literature: Geography of Development and Specificity

Abstract

Literature has long served as a mirror reflecting societal conditions, with illness emerging not only as a biological reality but also as a potent metaphor for human suffering, social dysfunction, and moral decay. From ancient epics to modern novels, writers across cultures have utilized disease to explore psychological, philosophical, and political dimensions of human life. While studies have addressed illness in specific literary works, few have systematically examined its symbolic evolution across literary epochs and geographies. This article explores how disease is employed in world literature—from classical epics to postmodern narratives—not merely as medical pathology but as a literary and cultural symbol of crisis, transformation, and resistance. Drawing on examples from Greek tragedy, Renaissance prose, Romanticism, Realism, and Modernism, the study analyzes how diseases like tuberculosis, plague, epilepsy, mental illness, and cancer are metaphorically deployed to reflect societal fears, individual alienation, and existential struggle. Authors such as Boccaccio, Dostoevsky, Camus, Poe, Jack London, and others use disease as a lens to critique social injustice, war, industrialization, and spiritual decline. The article traces a comparative and diachronic narrative that connects the symbolic function of disease across global literary traditions—from medieval Arabic poetry to 20th-century American and Japanese fiction—underscoring a universal pattern of representing illness as both personal affliction and collective anxiety. Understanding the metaphorical geography of disease enriches literary criticism, promotes interdisciplinary dialogue with medicine and psychology, and enhances public awareness of how illness shapes cultural identity and social consciousness.