Matthew L. Reznicek, "Tales of Health: Illness, Disability, and Citizenship in the Romantic National Tale" (Liverpool UP, 2026)

Summary

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Podcast Summary: New Books Network

Episode: Matthew L. Reznicek, "Tales of Health: Illness, Disability, and Citizenship in the Romantic National Tale" (Liverpool UP, 2026)

Host: Victoria Lupaschku
Guest: Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek, Associate Professor of Medical Humanities, University of Minnesota Medical School
Date: May 21, 2026

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Episode Overview

This episode centers on Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek’s new book, Tales of Health: Illness, Disability, and Citizenship in the Romantic National Tale. The conversation explores how Romantic-era national tales across Britain, Ireland, and continental Europe both reflected and shaped contemporary ideas about health, illness, and disability, especially as they related to nation-building and concepts of citizenship. Through a detailed tour of the book’s chapters, the host and guest explore themes of biopolitics, the body as both metaphor and social category, the politics of care, and how romantic fiction entwined bodily vulnerability, social inclusion/exclusion, and literary form.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Origins of the Project and Interdisciplinary Approach

[02:22]–[04:01]

• Dr. Reznicek began this project while teaching courses on nationalism in Romantic fiction and medical humanities. The overlap revealed patterns of health, caregiving, and bodily themes in national tales.
• Initial observations focused on women as carers to injured male bodies—a theme which expanded into the biopolitical implications of citizenship and health.

Notable Quote:

“Teaching those two classes at the same time, I began to see these patterns emerge...as the book developed, it became much more focused on the kind of biopolitical lens”
(Reznicek, [03:18])

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2. Update on the National Tale Genre

[05:01]–[09:10]

• Traditional readings focused on gender and the marriage plot as political allegory; Reznicek, using medical humanities, extends this to consider the body’s regulation and its ties to political philosophy (Locke, Hobbes).
• The concept of agency and citizenship emerges as deeply corporeal, relying on a “biopsychosocial model of illness.”

Notable Quote:

“The very conception of freedom...is premised on a specific type of body that then begins to be inculcated through ideas of marriage and of literature.”
(Reznicek, [07:49])

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3. Case Study: The Glorvina Solution and Irish National Tales

[10:01]–[16:33]

• The "Glorvina solution" (from Owenson's The Wild Irish Girl) is explained: legitimacy of English rule mediated through Irish consent, symbolized by the marriage plot.
• Health and illness are central: Glorvina’s father’s illness/death symbolizes the transition of authority; protagonist’s convalescence foregrounds dependency and challenges English ideals of autonomy.
• The Irish, traditionally pathologized, become providers of healing, thus flipping colonial narratives.

Notable Quote:

“The ones offering healing are the Irish bodies and the one needing the healing is the English body.”
(Reznicek, [16:33])

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4. Contagion, Epidemics, and National Allegory: Edgeworth’s Ennui

[20:44]–[28:46]

• Ennui draws a parallel between the mismanagement/illness of the Anglo-Irish aristocracy and broader social/political disorder.
• The protagonist’s ennui (illness of the elite) is both personal and systemic, reflecting on Ireland’s “uneasy body politic.”
• Models of estate management reflect broader debates on regulation, education, and social stability.

Notable Quote:

“The novel inherently sets up a parallel between the individual body and the social body.”
(Reznicek, [21:53])

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5. Heart, Circulation, and the Failed Marriage Plot: Staël’s Corinne

[30:08]–[40:50]

• Corinne transposes the genre to Italy, showcasing heart illness as a literal and figurative marker of social/bodily boundaries.
• The frustrated marriage and dying heroines illustrate tension between individual happiness and national/familial duty.
• Illness becomes a medium for exploring cosmopolitanism and the costs of social subordination.

Notable Quotes:

“Every time he begins to let himself succumb to the romance… his heart begins to malfunction.”
(Reznicek, [33:43])

“The body is both required to be subordinated to the paternal, the social, the national order, while also recognizing that it doesn't always produce happiness.”
(Reznicek, [37:18])

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6. Exclusion and Disability in Walter Scott’s Waverley Novels

[42:07]–[53:02]

• Scott’s characters with non-normative bodies (e.g., Elshie the Black Dwarf, Madge Wildfire, Davy Gillatly) are alternately marginalized and momentarily included in moments of political/social crisis.
• The “social model of disability” emerges, yet narrative inclusivity is fleeting or conditional; bodily difference often marks or perpetuates social exclusion.

Notable Quotes:

“His difference makes an irretrievably other, even though he's fundamentally important to the novel's achievement of social stability.”
(Reznicek, [44:57])

“Through her death [Madge Wildfire]… is excised from the novel most clearly. That’s arguably because her body, mind is so disruptive...”
(Reznicek, [50:07])

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7. Disability, Masculinity, and Care in Jane Austen’s Persuasion

[55:19]–[64:18]

• Captain Harvill and Captain Benwick embody postwar disability and emotional vulnerability. Their care work, especially in the aftermath of Louisa Musgrove’s injury, intersects with Anne Elliot's established caregiving role.
• The novel blurs or subverts the disabled/unproductive binary, suggesting care and productivity as routes to social integration.
• Raises questions about masculinizing care versus the feminization (and valuation) of emotional labor.

Notable Quote:

“The novel gives us a framework to think about the recovery of the category of disability through the practice of care and care ethics.”
(Reznicek, [64:12])

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8. Care Ethics and the Condition of England Novel

[65:11]–[70:37]

• Drawing on Joan Tronto, Reznicek suggests that valuing care would radically reshape social and political life.
• Elizabeth Gaskell’s North and South is highlighted for its attention to respiratory illness and shared vulnerability, paralleling experiences during the COVID-19 pandemic.
• Social stability, the novel implies, relies more on interdependency and care than on autonomy or hierarchy.

Notable Quotes:

“Care actually becomes a political model for thinking through the way society could be organized.”
(Reznicek, [65:32])

“Despite all these narratives of self-reliance and autonomy, the role of breath and respiration and respiratory illnesses reveals the degree to which we are fundamentally dependent on each other.”
(Reznicek, [68:58])

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9. Broader Implications: Humanistic Competencies for the Health Professions

[71:03]–[72:43]

• Reznicek calls for the integration of humanities (ethics, narrative, deliberation) into medical education, not as “soft skills” but as essential to understanding complex health experiences.

Notable Quote:

“The humanities, these humanistic competencies… are just as important and just as valid. And I hope that this book… provides a methodological way for thinking about how we use literature to think through the social complexities that shape our individual, our collective and our social experiences of health.”
(Reznicek, [71:57])

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Memorable Moments & Further Projects

• The episode ends with Reznicek teasing his next book project on the politics and expectations of care in 18th-century literature and a forthcoming article on “failures of care and the Gothic.”
  (Reznicek, [73:15])

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Timestamps for Important Segments

| Segment | Timestamp | |-------------------------------------------------|---------------| | Origins and Intersections | 02:08–04:01 | | Rethinking the National Tale Genre | 05:01–09:10 | | The Glorvina Solution in Irish National Tales | 10:01–16:33 | | Contagion and Aristocracy in Edgeworth’s Ennui | 20:44–28:46 | | Circulation, Marriage Plot in Staël’s Corinne | 30:08–40:50 | | Disability, Exclusion in Scott’s Novels | 42:07–53:02 | | Body, Disability, and Care in Persuasion | 55:19–64:18 | | Care Ethics & Condition of England Novels | 65:11–70:37 | | Broader Implications, Future Research | 71:03–74:40 |

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Conclusion

Dr. Reznicek’s Tales of Health reframes Romantic national tales as foundational texts for thinking about the relationship between health, disability, and citizenship. The episode reveals how literature can illuminate the politics of care, the construction of normativity, and the enduring complexities of inclusion and exclusion—insights as relevant today as in the 19th century.

“Care actually becomes a political model for thinking through the way society could be organized.”
(Reznicek, [65:32])

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Transcript

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[Victoria Lupaschku]

Hello, everyone. This is Victoria Lupaschku, one of the hosts for the New Books Network. And today we are here with Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek, associate professor of Medical humanities at University of Minnesota Medical School. Hello, Dr. Reznichek, and welcome to our channel.

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek]

Thank you so much for having me.

[Victoria Lupaschku]

Absolutely. And I'm super excited to talk with you about your book, Tales of Health, Illness, Disability and Citizenship in the Romantic National Tale, published by Liverpool University Press in 2026. Before I launched into the barrage of

[Victoria Lupaschku (Interjecting/Clarifying)]

questions that usually a podcast would have,

[Victoria Lupaschku]

I wanted to get to know you and your work better. And I was wondering whether you could tell us more about how you came to this project. You know, what got you interested in the genre of national tale? You know, reading it through a lens of health and biopolitics.

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek (Elaborating/Explaining)]

Yeah.

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek]

So this book actually comes out of teaching two different classes at the same time. One was an undergraduate course on nationalism in romantic fiction. So reading lots of national tales by Edgeworth and Scott and Owenson and Stahl and Austin. So all authors who appear in the book.

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek (Elaborating/Explaining)]

And at the same time, I was beginning to teach courses to medical students

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek]

where we were reading 19th century fiction through the lens of the social determinants

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek (Elaborating/Explaining)]

of health and teaching those two classes at the same time, I began to see these patterns emerge. And first the book was was noticing

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek]

or the book idea was noticing a pattern around women functioning as carers and health providers dealing with injured male bodies.

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek (Elaborating/Explaining)]

And I think that's a theme that.

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek]

That kind of persists in the book.

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek (Elaborating/Explaining)]

But as the book developed, it became

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek]

much more focused on the kind of biopolitical lens to get. To get to this slightly bigger argument.

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek (Elaborating/Explaining)]

But it started out of teaching both

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek]

medical humanities and fairly traditional Romantic era novels.

[Victoria Lupaschku]

That's very interesting. And I think it's making again the case for the importance of putting them together, because the connections do exist between the two domains, I would say. And we see this, of course, in your book, but also more and more in. In the research that's coming out, specifically

[Victoria Lupaschku (Interjecting/Clarifying)]

after the pandemic, then we paid attention more to these things.

[Victoria Lupaschku]

And I wanted to mention the first chapter entitled National Bodies, National Health and National An Introduction that brings us into the heart of the matter, where we discover also that the book, and I will quote, is about the way the early 19th century romantic genre of the National Tale exercises power and defines the boundary of citizenship through the categories of health, illness and disability. And when we see these categories at work, we understand how sociopolitical belonging is premised on the conception of the healthy body, to the exclusion, of course, of other types of bodies that are deemed otherwise. And I'm closing the citation here. So I was wondering about the historical and the political formation of these categories, specifically body, health and nation, and the ways in which they play such a significant role in the novels at hand. Really wanted to hear you speak a bit about it.

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek (Elaborating/Explaining)]

Yeah, let me work backwards because I think one of the things that this

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek]

book does by looking at it through the framework of the health and medical

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek (Elaborating/Explaining)]

humanities is update our reading of the

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek]

National Tale, which has primarily been read and interpreted through the framework of the marriage plot. So it was read largely then through a gendered and feminist framework.

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek (Elaborating/Explaining)]

And that kind of allowed the novels

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek]

to be understood as enacting a political agenda, either of reconciliation or forced enclosure. Because these novels almost all end in the. The trope of marriage between an English man and an Irish woman, or an Italian woman, or in the case of Austin, you know, an upper class woman and a rising naval officer.

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek (Elaborating/Explaining)]

And so it uses kind of Franco

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek]

Moretti's trope of marriage as

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek (Elaborating/Explaining)]

the key to avoiding social revolution. And that's been the dominant reading of the national tale really since the early 90s. Ena Faris work and Tony Tanner's work all kind of fit into this. This framework. And that was kind of the last, like we thought that was sort of

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek]

solving the national tale as a genre.

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek (Elaborating/Explaining)]

We had buttoned it up, but in the. The nearly 20 years since we had

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek]

published a book on the genre of

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek (Elaborating/Explaining)]

the national tale, there had been a couple of methodological shifts, one of which had been really the.

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek]

The proliferation of the medical humanities.

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek (Elaborating/Explaining)]

And I think that the medical humanities allow us to reconsider the body not as simply gendered, and not to say that gender is a simple construct, but it allows us to read the body

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek]

through a more complicated framework than the marriage plot allowed.

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek (Elaborating/Explaining)]

And once we begin to overlay the sort of the medicalization of the body, the biopoliticization of the body, it begins to put the national tale, I think, in a much longer tradition of political philosophy that stems from the writings of

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek]

Locke and Hobbes, which are remarkably corporeal. Obviously, the Leviathan is itself a corporeal

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek (Elaborating/Explaining)]

metaphor, but Locke, as I turn to repeatedly, both in the introduction and then in several of the chapters, frames his idea of freedom and the. Through the ability of the individual to

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek]

master and exert agency over their body.

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek (Elaborating/Explaining)]

So the very conception of freedom and of liberalism is premised on a specific type of body that then begins to

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek]

be inculcated through ideas of. Of marriage and of literature to achieve

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek (Elaborating/Explaining)]

the sort of agency or. Or the predominance of an agential individual, a self reliant individual, rather than someone

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek]

who is socially, biophysiologically, psychologically mediated through

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek (Elaborating/Explaining)]

all these different forces. And obviously you can tell that a

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek]

large amount of this is rendered through writings by Foucault and Butler.

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek (Elaborating/Explaining)]

But that kind of brings in the idea that the way that we conceive

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek]

of the body either as outside of structures or through a biophysiological framework, both

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek (Elaborating/Explaining)]

points sort of miss the mark. And I think I rely much more

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek]

heavily on what Neil Vickers and Derek Bolton talk about as the biopsychosocial model of illness. And then I think obviously of health and the body.

[Victoria Lupaschku]

Yeah, And I think the bio. Biopsychosocial model is. Is so important and tells us, as you mentioned, tells us so much. Right. About the ways in which the body has been used as a metaphor, but also like as a political category. Right. In these, in these cases. And I think we get into more details and this will become even more more apparent. Right. And was right with chapter one, entitled With Dignity, yet With Difficulty, Prosthesis, Dependency and Bodily Norms and the Wild Irish Girl. And the. The chapter focuses on the role of bodily vulnerability in a way that nuances the dominant understanding of the novel's achievement of sociopolitical legitimacy known as the Glorvina solution. And that was from Pat 21. And I knew nothing about this. And I really wanted to ask you,

[Victoria Lupaschku (Interjecting/Clarifying)]

what is the Glorvina solution? And you know what.

[Victoria Lupaschku]

What is the role that the politics of health had in expanding the. The purview of the national tale, in this case and also in general, of course.

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek]

Yeah. So the Glorina solution is the trick that the national tale performs in this specific, largely gendered reading. The Wild Irish girl is often thought of as the first national tale. And although there were earlier instances of novels, you know, the most famous is Maria Edgeworth's Castle Rack Rat, which has this extraordinarily long subtitle, the main part of which is an Hibernian tale.

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek (Elaborating/Explaining)]

So there were. There were novels that predate the use of national tale, that used Irish tale

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek]

or Scotch tale or Hibernian tale.

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek (Elaborating/Explaining)]

But Owenson's is the first to use

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek]

the term a national tale.

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek (Elaborating/Explaining)]

And in many ways it became the

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek]

paradigmatic example of what the national tale does.

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek (Elaborating/Explaining)]

It uses the romance plot to stage

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek]

a confrontation and reconciliation between an English protagonist and an Irish or. Or other colonial female protagonist.

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek (Elaborating/Explaining)]

And Tracy's point, Robert Tracy's point about the Glorvina solution is that if the English protagonist were to achieve legitimacy, it

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek]

has to happen through a conferral of legitimacy from Glorvina and her father, who

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek (Elaborating/Explaining)]

are the displaced and dispossessed descendants of

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek]

an Irish family who have lost their property in the Cromwellian wars. And so the marriage gives this sense of legitimacy to an English order through the. The sense of consent and reciprocity of the relationship with Glorina.

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek (Elaborating/Explaining)]

And so that kind of has been

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek]

the dominant way we've talked about this, this book in particular, then the genre more more broadly. It's a part of the marriage plot interpretation.

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek (Elaborating/Explaining)]

What enables, though the achievement of the Glorvina solution are two key interactions with

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek]

questions of health and illness.

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek (Elaborating/Explaining)]

The most important of these is the

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek]

illness of Glorvina's father, the Prince of Inishmore, whose familial estates have been stripped from him by the descendants of. Of these Cromwellian invaders.

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek (Elaborating/Explaining)]

And his final illness and death are

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek]

what enable and allow Glorvina to marry Horatio, the English protagonist. He gives this sort of blessing at

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek (Elaborating/Explaining)]

the ultimate reveal of secret identities and hidden identities. And so his death, his illness, which

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek]

I argue is very much framed in terms of an eruption of colonial antipathy and the threat of renewed violence, his

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek (Elaborating/Explaining)]

death becomes necessary in order to consign that to the past and thus enabling

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek]

Glorvina and Horatio to marry peaceably.

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek (Elaborating/Explaining)]

But before that, the majority of the novel is spent with Horatio, this sort of idealized Englishman in convalescence. He sustains a pretty severe injury both to his head and his arm early

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek]

in the novel trying to get a look at Glorvina. And he's so entranced by her that

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek (Elaborating/Explaining)]

he falls and injures himself and then finds himself, for the majority of the novel, dependent on the.

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek]

The Inishmore family and their priest and

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek (Elaborating/Explaining)]

their nurse to help heal him.

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek]

And he experiences all these sort of

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek (Elaborating/Explaining)]

disruptions of.

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek]

Of healing. You know, obviously healing is never linear. It's recursive and digressive.

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek (Elaborating/Explaining)]

And so she, as Horatio's illness, causes this question about the way that we

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek]

view the English body.

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek (Elaborating/Explaining)]

If we think about the English body in that sort of Lockean framework about

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek]

the self regulating individual, the autonomous individual, an argument that goes back obviously to Locke and then to Hobbes before then,

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek (Elaborating/Explaining)]

Horatio seems to fail that test. Not only is he dependent throughout the majority of the novel, but at one point he also says he would not exchange his injured body for the soundest head in all of the kingdom because this experience of bodily injury and incapacity enables him to spend time with Glorvina. And so that that framework of illness, injury and recovery, as well as the language of dependency and prosthesis, actually fundamentally enables and allows the narrative of cultural encounter that has become the characteristic trait

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek]

of the national tale, leading to the even more characteristic marriage solution.

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek (Elaborating/Explaining)]

And so these two key experiences of injury and illness disrupt the English idea

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek]

of, of invulnerability, of. Of self regulation and autonomy.

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek (Elaborating/Explaining)]

And then equally, they also provide an

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek]

alternative image of the Irish body.

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek (Elaborating/Explaining)]

And this goes back to Elizabethan writings

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek]

around Ireland from, from Edmund Spencer and

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek (Elaborating/Explaining)]

finds Morrison, who portray the Irish as not only lazy and unshaven, but also as lice infested and contagious. And there's this long tradition in which

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek]

the Irish body is seen as a threat to the health of the English body.

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek (Elaborating/Explaining)]

But the novel reverses all of that because the ones offering healing are the Irish bodies and the one needing the

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek]

healing is the English body.

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[Victoria Lupaschku]

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[Victoria Lupaschku]

That's fascinating. And you know, it brings back tales about, you know, the, the pre, the British presence in Hong Kong, for example, and how, and of course in India and, and other places in the world and how. Right. This, this kind of discourse about, you know, contagion and about dirt. Right. That in, in relation to, to other people comes into conversation in order to justify the English presence or you know, to kind of even contribute to maybe a different kind of take on the national tale. So from this perspective, it feels like the, the novel that, that you mentioned in chapter one, it's really doing something quite innovative. Right. It's spins the, the, the narrative a little bit. Right.

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek (Elaborating/Explaining)]

I think so. And I think you're right to point to the broader colonial context.

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek]

Right. You know, Warwick Anderson and others, Alan Buell have, and, and Suman Seth have all talked about the way that disease

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek (Elaborating/Explaining)]

and illness change the way that we

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek]

think about colonialism because of these experiences of encounters.

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek (Elaborating/Explaining)]

And Owenson, the opening of the novel

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek]

compares the Irish to the, the indigenous peoples of Alaska, the Eskimos, and has

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek (Elaborating/Explaining)]

these references to Montezuma and the Aztecs. It's a very global text, but it's interesting then coming back to your point that in all of these colonial encounters, the healthy body or the concept of health is used to stigmatize the colonial

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek]

other and elevate the colonizing English.

[Victoria Lupaschku]

Yeah, I think that that can be

[Victoria Lupaschku (Interjecting/Clarifying)]

a full podcast in itself as well. But

[Victoria Lupaschku]

speaking and maintaining this idea of the Contagion. Right. And epidemic. In chapter two, entitled Contaminated by the Epidemic, Infection, Disease, Social Disorder and the Nation, in Maria Edgeworth's N, we see the management of individual health in relation to the public and the nation. So even more. Right. The connection between the individual and the bigger categories. And I haven't read this novel, so I really wanted to hear more details about it, but specifically how the novel bridges the personal and the national or the afflicted body to a potentially weak nation, as opposed to what we would think would be a, you know, healthy, let's say, nation.

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek (Elaborating/Explaining)]

Yeah. This is such an interesting novel. And oftentimes scholars of Edgeworth tend to

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek]

focus on either the Irish fiction or the English fiction.

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek (Elaborating/Explaining)]

And I think those two have a

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek]

lot more overlap than we. Than we have spent time discussing.

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek (Elaborating/Explaining)]

But in Ennui, which was published as

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek]

part of her Tales of Fashionable Life,

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek (Elaborating/Explaining)]

then the tale, the novel, is obviously

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek]

called after a recognized form of illness

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek (Elaborating/Explaining)]

at the time and being attributed to fashionable life. It's very much characterized as an illness

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek]

belonging to the aristocracy

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek (Elaborating/Explaining)]

and to the mismanagement of the.

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek]

Of the aristocracy. The mismanagement by the aristocracy, both of

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek (Elaborating/Explaining)]

themselves, and then, as you see throughout the novel, of the landed estates that

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek]

they are meant to manage.

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek (Elaborating/Explaining)]

And so the novel inherently sets up

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek]

a parallel between the individual body and the social body.

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek (Elaborating/Explaining)]

And it's this really kind of obvious Lockean framework where if you're unable to regulate your body, how can the social

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek]

body or the body politic be well, regulated? You know, this. This is something that actually Adam Smith spent a lot of time talking about, again through all these really corporeal metaphors

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek (Elaborating/Explaining)]

in both the wealth of nations and

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek]

in the Theory of Moral Sentiments.

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek (Elaborating/Explaining)]

But Edgeworth is writing about the class to which she belongs, the landed gentry

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek]

of what's called the Anglo Irish ascendancy. So English landowners in Ireland who are recognized as having been in Ireland long enough where they're not quite fully English, not quite fully Irish, so they're this weird hybrid Anglo Irish.

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek (Elaborating/Explaining)]

And there's been a lot of ink

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek]

spilled about the way in which Anglo Irish literature is distinct from indigenous Irish literature or Irish language literature.

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek (Elaborating/Explaining)]

But Edgeworth's novel really turns, I think,

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek]

the lens back onto the aristocrats themselves

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek (Elaborating/Explaining)]

in a way that's quite clearly participating in a broader discourse that we can

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek]

see in the works of George Cheney

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek (Elaborating/Explaining)]

or William Buchan that attributes the development of all these modern illnesses to unregulated, luxurious indulgence.

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek]

George Cheney complains about the over consumption of tea and French food and all

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek (Elaborating/Explaining)]

these sorts of things that produce what

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek]

he calls the English malady.

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek (Elaborating/Explaining)]

And Edgeworth draws on almost the same exact list. Her main protagonist, the Earl of Glenthorn, is brought up in indolence. He's. He struggles then to apply himself in

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek]

any rigorous, laborious way.

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek (Elaborating/Explaining)]

He not only travels from place to place without caring what he sees, but simply needs the motion.

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek]

He develops obsessions with French food, which

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek (Elaborating/Explaining)]

leads to over consumption.

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek]

He develops a gambling addiction which depletes his.

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek (Elaborating/Explaining)]

His property. And the whole time he lacks the.

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek]

The ability to derive any pleasure.

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek (Elaborating/Explaining)]

And so the mismanagement, the lack of responsibility or agency that he experiences is then manifested in the way that he

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek]

mismanages his estates in Ireland.

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek (Elaborating/Explaining)]

He returns to his estates in Ireland

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek]

following a birthday at which he attempts

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek (Elaborating/Explaining)]

death by suicide and is prevented from

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek]

carrying out the act by an old Irish woman who turns out to be his childhood nurse.

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek (Elaborating/Explaining)]

When he is thought dead, he hears the way that his servants treat him

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek]

and he finds out that his wife has been having an affair.

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek (Elaborating/Explaining)]

And so the only person who seems

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek]

to care for him is this childhood nurse, Eleanor, who's. Who's traveled to Ireland to try to see him one more time. She begs that he comes back to Ireland to try to develop this relationship.

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek (Elaborating/Explaining)]

So he returns and experiences this sense

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek]

of power, like he all of a sudden matters. He has the authority to kind of

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek (Elaborating/Explaining)]

do things and function as

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek]

a tyrant in some ways.

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek (Elaborating/Explaining)]

But when he's there, he's confronted with

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek]

very diametrically opposing models of management. One estate is managed by an agent named Hardcastle, and the other by an enlightened Scottish agent named MacLeod.

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek (Elaborating/Explaining)]

MacLeod is very deeply invested in the

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek]

works of Adam Smith. He's very clearly read the. The thinkers from the Scottish Enlightenment and encourages a type of management that is rooted in kind of social stability.

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek (Elaborating/Explaining)]

Through regulation, through proper labor, through active pursuits, he achieves kind of the peaceability

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek]

or the peaceful management of an otherwise potentially rebellious peasantry. The opposing view held by Hardcastle is one of domination. That you should not educate the Irish, that they. That any sort of education or. Or benefit is meant or is going to be used simply for dangerous gains, adding fuel to fire, all of these sorts of things. He compares them to, to snakes and, and wasps, animals with this sort of threat.

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek (Elaborating/Explaining)]

And when, when the novel actually does represent physical violence, the violence correlates to Glenn Thorne's experiences of severe ennui, potentially depression.

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek]

He talks about it as his indolence and almost imbecility.

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek (Elaborating/Explaining)]

And so the novel draws what I think is a direct parallel between the State of his estates.

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek]

But. But it's draw. It's actually kind of representative of a much wider movement across the island. So the state of the nation and

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek (Elaborating/Explaining)]

the state of Glen Thorne's health. And so I think the novel argues that an ailing or an ill or an ill managed aristocracy is simply incapable of managing or regulating a nation that might itself be predisposed to these outbreaks

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek]

of epidemics or epidemics of rebelliousness, epidemics of insurrection, as the novel calls it.

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek (Elaborating/Explaining)]

And that parallel, I think is really important.

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek]

And it picks up on, you know, obviously the.

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek (Elaborating/Explaining)]

The threat of contagion that we see

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek]

in Burke's reflections on the revolution in

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek (Elaborating/Explaining)]

France and also just the history of.

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek]

Of epidemic outbreaks in Ireland.

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek (Elaborating/Explaining)]

And putting Edgeworth in that sort of medical history alongside the philosophy and the

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek]

medical writings of writers like Locke and her brother in law, Thomas Beddows, I

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek (Elaborating/Explaining)]

think helps us see a slightly bigger

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek]

picture for the way that Edgeworth's writings think about the relationship between the individual and the state.

[Victoria Lupaschku]

Absolutely. It does give the bigger picture and I think it allows us to think about more aspects at the same time. Like it contains. Right. The possibility of considering different aspects of the same picture in. At the same time in mind. And I think that's one of the good things.

[Victoria Lupaschku (Interjecting/Clarifying)]

Right.

[Victoria Lupaschku]

Of interdisciplinary work and health humanities in this case, that it kind of provides this multi. Perspective in a way.

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek (Elaborating/Explaining)]

Yeah. And I think, I mean, one of the things that I feel like that interdisciplinarity enables is not to argue that this is the ultimate or the best reading, but that here is an alternative

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek]

reading by positioning the novel within this otherwise unconsidered context.

[Victoria Lupaschku]

Yeah, absolutely. Yes, I, I totally agree that, you know, it's not this almost, you know, like fight for dominance over, you know, a critical understanding of a subject, but it's more, as you say, the alternative. Right. This is a way to consider things and to put them together in a way that would make sense at this particular moment as well. And we stay with the marriage plot.

[Victoria Lupaschku (Interjecting/Clarifying)]

We're not leaving that behind because in

[Victoria Lupaschku]

chapter three, entitled Attacking the Most Sensitive Places, the Heart, Circulation and Belonging in Korean, we get actually to the European continent more. And the chapter focuses on the manifestations of anxiety and heartbreak on the individual and political body. And I read Corinne a long time

[Victoria Lupaschku (Interjecting/Clarifying)]

ago in graduate school, so, you know, I still have, I still have questions about the details, but, you know, I

[Victoria Lupaschku]

really wanted to ask about the marriage plot and the ways in which it weaves through notions of individual and national health and how illness is actually featuring in all of is. Yeah.

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek (Elaborating/Explaining)]

I think it's funny. This was the last chapter I wrote

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek]

and in many ways it's the chapter that I found the most surprising, obviously.

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek (Elaborating/Explaining)]

So Corinne is the.

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek]

Is a novel subtitled or Italy. It's a. It's a French novel about a nation

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek (Elaborating/Explaining)]

that does not yet exist.

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek]

Obviously they're sorgimento. It doesn't happen until the later 19th century.

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek (Elaborating/Explaining)]

And so it has many of the hallmarks of the traditional national tale as it developed in Ireland.

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek]

The marriage plot between people of two different national or cultural regions, rooted in history and difference and an attempt at amelioration.

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek (Elaborating/Explaining)]

But because of the strange fact that Italy is not conceived as an.

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek]

As a unified nation, I think it forces a shift in the way that the genre functions.

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek (Elaborating/Explaining)]

And that happens through the frustration of the marriage plot. So the majority of the novel is

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek]

about the relationship between Oswald, Lord Melville, and then this mysterious Italian woman named Corid.

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek (Elaborating/Explaining)]

And we come to find out that

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek]

Oswald is in Europe recovering from a

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek (Elaborating/Explaining)]

heart condition, essentially a valvular leak. And this leak seems to get worse whenever he is or believes himself to

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek]

be violating the wishes of his now deceased father. So there's a little psychosomatic condition going on, but there's also a biophysiological condition.

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek (Elaborating/Explaining)]

And the way that the novel pairs

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek]

health with submission to the paternal order,

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek (Elaborating/Explaining)]

I think is really important because it

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek]

unites the paternal order with the national order. Oswald is Scottish, but emblematic of Britain. He comes to represent kind of the British ideal masculinity, but was in France

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek (Elaborating/Explaining)]

kind of manipulated by a previous relationship

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek]

when his father died.

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek (Elaborating/Explaining)]

And so it feels intense personal guilt

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek]

about having missed his father's death and about having disappointed his father at the end of his life.

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek (Elaborating/Explaining)]

And so when he comes to Italy and begins to fall in love with Corinne, he's constantly haunted by the sense

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek]

that his father would not appear approve of this relationship.

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek (Elaborating/Explaining)]

Because the way that Corinne lives very

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek]

publicly is so anathema to the British ideal of femininity.

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek (Elaborating/Explaining)]

And so every time he begins to

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek]

let himself succumb to the. The romance with this Italian woman, his heart begins to malfunction. There's. There's a return of these symptoms.

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek (Elaborating/Explaining)]

And so he feels that his body

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek]

is enforcing this submission to his father's desires.

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek (Elaborating/Explaining)]

And one of the last wishes of his father was for him to marry

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek]

the daughter of an old friend, Lucille Edgermont. Now, of course, come to find out Lucille is actually Corinne's half sister, but represents a much more obviously English or British model of Femininity. She's very quiet, very private. She's blonde and fair, where Corinne is dark. And Corinne was brought up by an Italian mother in Italy. So Oswald returns to England to try to rectify the relationship between Corinne and. And her family, to try to manage these estates and. And his relationship.

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek (Elaborating/Explaining)]

But when he's there, he begins to fall in love, less with Corinne and more with Lucille, in part as this

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek]

sense that I owe it to my

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek (Elaborating/Explaining)]

father, but also he begins to feel

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek]

personal affection for her, not simply out of duty, but also out of. Out of desire.

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek (Elaborating/Explaining)]

Corinne, unknowingly or unbeknownst to Oswald, follows him to England. And there begins to develop an illness

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek]

where she is faint and sick and begins to develop what conditions of obviously

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek (Elaborating/Explaining)]

heart sickness or heartbrokenness, but they result

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek]

in real kind of bodily symptoms.

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek (Elaborating/Explaining)]

And that actually pulls us back to Corinthin's choice childhood. When she was brought to England, she was so different and forced to conform in all these ways that she talked about really struggling and feeling a pain

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek]

in her heart, a pain in her body.

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek (Elaborating/Explaining)]

And when she attained independence, she decided

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek]

that she was going to go back

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek (Elaborating/Explaining)]

to Italy, but the only way her stepmother would allow her to do that

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek]

was if she played dead, if there were reports circulated that she had died and was thus able to go to Italy, kind of free and fully separate from her English roots, English family.

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek (Elaborating/Explaining)]

And so you get this sense of living death that begins to kind of

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek]

foreshadow Corinne's ultimate end.

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek (Elaborating/Explaining)]

If the novel, or if the genre of the national tale has largely been

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek]

thought of as using the marriage plot

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek (Elaborating/Explaining)]

to achieve national stability, Corinne begins to

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek]

upset that framework, because it doesn't end in the marriage between Oswald and Corinne. It ends in the marriage between Oswald and Lucille.

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek (Elaborating/Explaining)]

But neither character ends happily.

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek]

Oswald returns to the continent due to a resurgence in his heart condition, and

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek (Elaborating/Explaining)]

Corinne dies of heartbreak. And so we have this way in which the body is both required to

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek]

be subordinated to the paternal, the social, the national order, while also recognizing that

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek (Elaborating/Explaining)]

it doesn't always produce happiness. And so there's this conflict that begins

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek]

to emerge between the individual and the

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek (Elaborating/Explaining)]

social that disrupts not only the experience of health, but the consolidation of that national order.

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[Victoria Lupaschku]

And it's very interesting how I think the. The directions of illness and health in a way are, you know, like they. They in. They interact or interweave with each other. Right. Because it's not just the. The sick individual body that will result in a. In a sickly nation, but then, you know, the formation of the nation or like the. The imagination of it kind of, you know, through emotions would have an impact on the body itself. And then, you know, you mentioned death and like the living death that the character is experiencing, and there's this almost continuous exchange. Right. Between these notions.

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek]

Yeah.

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek (Elaborating/Explaining)]

This is one of those novels that

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek]

I think plays with ideas of circulation, obviously through the threat of a valvular leak. The novel focuses on the bodily experience of circulation, but the movement of an Italian woman to England, of

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek (Elaborating/Explaining)]

Scottish literature

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek]

and Italian literature and Italian art, and

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek (Elaborating/Explaining)]

the cosmopolitan transfer of ideas.

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek]

The novel's really engaging in multiple levels of circulation. And Deidre Shauna lynch has talked a little bit about this in her work on Corinne.

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek (Elaborating/Explaining)]

And I think the. The novel really helps us then begin to conceptualize the way that the nation

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek]

state demands subordination of the body.

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek (Elaborating/Explaining)]

And we can see this especially through

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek]

the idea that Oswald's health largely tracks

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek (Elaborating/Explaining)]

with his willingness to adhere to his

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek]

father's wishes and achieve all the hallmarks of traditional British masculinity.

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek (Elaborating/Explaining)]

It's when he moves into the sort

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek]

of the hybrid model or the cosmopolitan model that his health begins to suffer.

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek (Elaborating/Explaining)]

And so you get this almost consolidation of the bodily boundaries with the national boundaries until the end of the novel, when that all feels frustrated because no one ends up happy.

[Victoria Lupaschku (Interjecting/Clarifying)]

Yeah. Yes, I was thinking exactly that. That nobody is ever happy, you know, in this case. And then there's so much suffering through.

[Victoria Lupaschku]

Through the novel. Right. And not just this one, but, you know, if you think about, you know, like the. The genre in itself, there's so much suffering and longing. Right.

[Victoria Lupaschku (Interjecting/Clarifying)]

Break.

[Victoria Lupaschku]

And, you know, all of These emotions that are, that have a certain temporality to them.

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek (Elaborating/Explaining)]

Yeah, there's really, there's more work to be done on the, the history of emotions in these novels. I'm really surprised in some ways that

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek]

Edgeworth and Stahl have not received more

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek (Elaborating/Explaining)]

attention from historians of emotion.

[Victoria Lupaschku (Interjecting/Clarifying)]

Maybe with this conversation, you know, maybe we can, we can, you know, inspire some, some more research in that, in this way, but also for, for the,

[Victoria Lupaschku]

the novel in the next chapter entitled Excluded by the very fiat of nature the process of exclusion in the Waverly novels. And you know, I said one novel, but actually there, there are multiple that you look at in this chapter and you know, the, the book analyzes the representation of disabled and non normative bodies. So how would this exclusion.

[Victoria Lupaschku (Interjecting/Clarifying)]

Right.

[Victoria Lupaschku]

Manifest in the three novels examined here? And what can be said about bodily vulnerability?

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek (Elaborating/Explaining)]

Yeah, so this chapter looks at the

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek]

works of Walter Scott, the Waverly novels, and it actually moves chronologically backward in order of which the novels were published, but forward in terms of the moment when the novels were set. So it begins with his novel the Black Dwarf, which is set in the immediate aftermath of the Acts of Union of 1707. And as the novel, or as the title would suggest, the primary character has a non normative body. Elshe, the Black Dwarf experiences dwarfism, but also extraordinary strength

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek (Elaborating/Explaining)]

and is throughout the

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek]

novel cast out into the physical periphery of the novel. Even though he's the main character, or

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek (Elaborating/Explaining)]

at least titular character, he prefers it

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek]

that way for the most part.

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek (Elaborating/Explaining)]

And as we come to find out

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek]

more about his past, we learn more about why.

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek (Elaborating/Explaining)]

But he is described at the beginning

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek]

in this really fascinating way where he. The Magnum opus edition includes this introduction where Scott, Scott's narrator describes an almost anatomical details, the figure of the person who inspired this novel, and then that all of which focuses on the abnormal or extraordinary nature of his body.

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek (Elaborating/Explaining)]

Then you also get these little points where the novel describes the ways that he is treated by people because of his difference. So he's excluded, he's taunted, he's jilted

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek]

by children and by a former friend, a former fiance.

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek (Elaborating/Explaining)]

All of which kind of leads to

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek]

this sense of misanthropy.

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek (Elaborating/Explaining)]

But even as the novel recognizes all these moments where he is ill treated,

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek]

it attributes his misanthropy to his bodily form.

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek (Elaborating/Explaining)]

And so you get this real important moment where his difference makes an irretrievable or irretrievably other, even though he's fundamentally

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek]

important to the novel's achievement of social stability. And that happens unsurprisingly when the political plot and the marriage plot converge, Elshe disrupts this forced wedding that is supposed to lead to the kickoff of a Jacobit rebellion. And by disrupting the wedding, he disrupts the political plot, the. The political threat to the newly formed United Kingdom of Great Britain.

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek (Elaborating/Explaining)]

And this. This moment where Elshie is included by the Queen's forces to help us re. Establish social order against the threat of rebellion is very fleeting. Not only does he insist upon leaving the marriage, the.

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek]

The proper marriage, and insists that you will see me no more, I will be like one who is dead. So again, kind of recalling that living death that we saw in Corinne, the

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek (Elaborating/Explaining)]

end, the very end of the novel talks about the villagers in this lowland community in Scotland still seeing this sort of peripheral figure and attributing every ill

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek]

deed to the black dwarf.

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek (Elaborating/Explaining)]

And so even though he is presumed

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek]

dead or living, experiencing a living death,

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek (Elaborating/Explaining)]

the community still blames him for everything. As you get this, what we might think about as the social model of

[Victoria Lupaschku (Interjecting/Clarifying)]

disability

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek]

being enacted throughout the majority of this novel, despite the fleeting moment of potential inclusion, the not the next novel that we think about is the Heart

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek (Elaborating/Explaining)]

of Midlothian, which is one of Scott's

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek]

longer novels, but actually teaches really, really well.

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek (Elaborating/Explaining)]

And the Heart of Midlothian again sees this relationship between the state and the

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek]

regulation of abnormal or extraordinary bodies. The premise of the Heart of Midlothian is a young girl who is accused of infanticide whose sister begins to walk from Edinburgh all the way to London to seek clemency. And so Effie Deans, the young woman who's walking, is the sister of Jeannie Deans, who is. No, I had that backwards, sorry. The.

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek (Elaborating/Explaining)]

The two sisters, one is imprisoned for infanticide, the other is walking all the

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek]

way to London from Edinburgh for. For clemency.

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek (Elaborating/Explaining)]

The threat of infanticide has become, according to the English monarchy, so dangerous in

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek]

Scotland that there must be bodily repercussions and social repercussions. So the. The young woman who's imprisoned is meant to be made an example of.

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek (Elaborating/Explaining)]

And this clearly ties the emergence of natalism and a biopolitical model where the state's interests lie in regulating the population with the sort of disciplinary forces that

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek]

we come to think of through Foucault.

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek (Elaborating/Explaining)]

And you get this moment where the Queen of England begins to intervene when the young woman's sister appeals not to

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek]

the monarch, but to the mother who is a monarch.

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek (Elaborating/Explaining)]

And so you get this really profound

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek]

moment where the social regulation of the body and the legal regulation of the body are rendered through the question of the maternal.

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek (Elaborating/Explaining)]

And so then this novel really functions

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek]

as a question, as a novel about the regulation of normative maternity. So on the one hand you have the woman who's accused of infanticide.

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek (Elaborating/Explaining)]

Now on the other, we have this

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek]

sort of spectral, haunting figure named Madge Wildfire, who throughout the novel speaks only in songs and fragments and unintelligible phrases,

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek (Elaborating/Explaining)]

whose madness is attributed to the death of her child. Come to find out again through these

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek]

sort of fragmentary speeches that her child was killed by her mother.

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek (Elaborating/Explaining)]

As you get these computers impeding moments

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek]

of maternity regulation, the state and the law, and also madness. Madge Wildfire, because of her madness, is the one character who is excised from the novel most clearly.

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek (Elaborating/Explaining)]

Her death occurs off scene. She is in an asylum. And we're just reported.

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek]

We kind of overhear secondhand about her death without seeing any of the sympathetic representation.

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek (Elaborating/Explaining)]

And that's arguably because her.

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek]

Her body, mind is so disruptive not only to the form of the novel

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek (Elaborating/Explaining)]

through the fragmentary speech, but to the achievement of.

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek]

Of social stability through the regulation of the body.

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek (Elaborating/Explaining)]

And then the last novel that I

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek]

look at in that chapter is Scott's first novel, Waverly.

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek (Elaborating/Explaining)]

And this begins to kind of pull on a thread that we saw in chapter one.

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek]

Thinking about Horatio and bodily vulnerability, Edward Waverly, the protagonist of the novel, Waverly is constantly injured. He's knocked unconscious, he nearly breaks an

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek (Elaborating/Explaining)]

ankle, he's blindfolded and recovering from an illness. He's confined all these things where he

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek]

lacks bodily agency, but he's also always able to recover.

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek (Elaborating/Explaining)]

And so this novel begins to establish

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek]

what I think about as a normative level of endurability, a body that, though

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek (Elaborating/Explaining)]

vulnerable, isn't excessively vulnerable or isn't excessively

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek]

othered through an extraordinary bodily condition.

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek (Elaborating/Explaining)]

And Waverly is contrasted with another sort

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek]

of spectral minor figure named Davey Gillatly,

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek (Elaborating/Explaining)]

who again speaks in song and fragments

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek]

and is constantly recognized as a quote unquote idiot.

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek (Elaborating/Explaining)]

And this picks up on a much

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek]

broader tradition that Emily Stanbach has written beautifully about through the framework of Wordsworth and Wordsworth's poem the Idiot Boy.

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek (Elaborating/Explaining)]

There's a disruptive moment if in the

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek]

Black Dwarf, Elshie's otherness is too much and consigns him to the periphery along, you know. And the same thing happens with Madge Wildfire.

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek (Elaborating/Explaining)]

Through her death, Davy Gillatly is allowed to remain a part of the estate and also symbolically of the union between

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek]

Scotland and England following the. The Battle of Culloden and so Davy

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek (Elaborating/Explaining)]

somehow, although extraordinary and different, isn't threatening enough and provides us the glimpse of

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek]

a way forward for a more inclusive vision of Scotland and England.

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[Victoria Lupaschku]

That's, you know, that's, that's very. I don't know how to put. I would like to say interesting, but,

[Victoria Lupaschku (Interjecting/Clarifying)]

you know, it's more than that.

[Victoria Lupaschku]

And to think about the vision of Scotland as opposed to the vision of Ireland. Right. And how they appear through the novels and how that is rendered at that particular time when these novels were written. But it's very interesting how this, when you mentioned that the character is not threatening enough to actually be taken into consideration and excluded in many ways. And I'm not sure that the same kind of idea applies to next chapter. Right. The little lame disability, marriage and the reimagining of the national body in Persuasion. But definitely the idea of a certain type of disability as the foundational element for social stability reemerges and it connects to the national tail. So I wanted to ask a little bit about the vision of the body. Like, how is it different? How is it kind of continuing in a way, this, you know, idea, you

[Victoria Lupaschku (Interjecting/Clarifying)]

know, basically what happens, right. In Persuasion.

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek (Elaborating/Explaining)]

Yeah. I guess before we jump to Persuasion, it might just be worth saying a little bit about why Scotland seems to

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek]

function differently from Ireland.

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek (Elaborating/Explaining)]

I think that that is largely attributable to. To the fact that Scott's novels are more obviously set in the past than

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek]

either Edgeworth's or Owenson's. So the historical nature or the, the historicity of Scott's novels. Waverly is subtitled or TIS 60 years since.

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek (Elaborating/Explaining)]

And so the threat of Rebellion has been contained. Like I said, the Black Dwarf is

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek]

set in the years following the 1707 Acts of Union. The heart of Midlothian is set in

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek (Elaborating/Explaining)]

the 1740s, kind of between the 1707 and 17.

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek]

Or, sorry, the heart of Midlothian is set in between the act of Union of 1707 and the 1745 rebellion that leads to Culloden, that ends Waverly.

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek (Elaborating/Explaining)]

And so these disruptions are neutralized by the very fact of their historical nature. We know that the disruptions didn't succeed. And so then we have this way that they are allowed to present more disruptive bodies because they're less threatening than

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek]

the immediate history of Edgeworth's 1798 rebellion or the 1803 rebellion.

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek (Elaborating/Explaining)]

And so I think Scotland is perceived

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek]

of in the historical novel as less threatening.

[Victoria Lupaschku]

Yeah, that makes sense.

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek (Elaborating/Explaining)]

And I think, you know, obviously.

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek]

Right. Like you could put that into sort of Bakhtinian questions around the chronotope or whatever, but. But I do think it's the historical nature that kind of helps answer that question.

[Victoria Lupaschku]

And sorry I interrupted you about, you

[Victoria Lupaschku (Interjecting/Clarifying)]

know, Persuasion as we go towards it. Yeah.

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek (Elaborating/Explaining)]

So Persuasion is Austin's last novel or last finished novel. And it deals primarily with the marriage

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek]

plot between Anne Elliot, who's a member of the kind of the landed gentry who are cash strapped but very proud of their status, and the rising class of naval officer embodied by Captain Wentworth.

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek (Elaborating/Explaining)]

But the novel is populated with these instances of bodily injury, bodily vulnerability and of disability. Disability that's directly attributed to the Napoleonic Wars. So the, the main figures of disability

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek]

that I focus on, and there's one

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek (Elaborating/Explaining)]

on whom I don't spend much time,

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek]

but who's worth mentioning here, the main figures of disability that I focus on are Captain Bennick and his colleague, Captain Harvl. Captain Harvl is the one who's described as a little lame and his injuries then kind of refer to modes of mobility. He is encumbered in some way

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek (Elaborating/Explaining)]

despite

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek]

this, or I don't want to say despite this. Even with this description of being a little lame, the novel almost over emphasizes his capacity for productivity. He's talked about as constantly like mending

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek (Elaborating/Explaining)]

nets and refinishing his house and making toys for his children. He's just sort of like obsessively productive. And of course that disrupts the narrative

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek]

around disability as a state of unproductivity. It frustrates that Lockean framework around the self reliant or autonomous individual being distinct from the disabled individual.

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek (Elaborating/Explaining)]

His colleague, Captain Bennett is slightly more complicated.

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek]

He's described in a way almost similar

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek (Elaborating/Explaining)]

to Glenn Thorne as being.

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek]

As experiencing sort of melancholy or potentially what. What my med students talk about as pathological grief, which is a term I find so fascinating.

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek (Elaborating/Explaining)]

Bennett lost his fiance and missed her

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek]

death by a matter of days while his ship was in harbor. But he was not yet on shore and obviously is in a profound state of grief because of that. And on top of all of this, this grief, he is reading way too much poetry, way too much Byron and way too much Scott.

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek (Elaborating/Explaining)]

And that seems to exacerbate the sense of melancholy.

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek]

There's a point where the narrator explains that it fell to Anne Elliot's lot to sit next to Bennet at dinner.

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek (Elaborating/Explaining)]

And I think that language is really important because it shows the sense that,

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek]

like, not only is Bennett kind of

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek (Elaborating/Explaining)]

a drag, but that the novel sees him and his emotional

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek]

condition as a burden.

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek (Elaborating/Explaining)]

And so we begin to see this

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek]

category of disability, of emotional.

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek (Elaborating/Explaining)]

Of complex emotional health, as disabling until the major bodily crisis in the novel,

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek]

which is Louisa Musgrove's injury. There's a whole thing to go into that again. More work, I think, needs to be done to situate Louisa Musgrove's injury in the broader context of developments of intracranial surgery and intracranial medicine that results from the Napoleonic Wars. But she is rendered unconscious after jumping off these steps and hitting her head.

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek (Elaborating/Explaining)]

And in this moment, everyone is frozen with fear and anxiety except for Anne Elliot and Captain Bennet.

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek]

Anne has throughout the novel been rendered

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek (Elaborating/Explaining)]

the most competent care provider, and Bennett has been set aside as sort of.

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek]

Kind of useless with his too much poetry and too much emotion.

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek (Elaborating/Explaining)]

So that they remain the single most

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek]

active and capable forces at this moment, I think, really is important.

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek (Elaborating/Explaining)]

And, of course, at the level of

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek]

plot, Luis's injury begins to rewire the marriage narrative.

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek (Elaborating/Explaining)]

Like I said, the marriage plot in

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek]

this novel focuses on Captain Wentworth and Anne Elliot.

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek (Elaborating/Explaining)]

But the first half of the novel, we're led to believe that Captain Wentworth

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek]

is no longer interested in Anne because he's flirting with and sort of giving attention to Louisa Musgrove.

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek (Elaborating/Explaining)]

And in the wake of this injury, not only does Louisa's personality begin to

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek]

change as a result of her injury, and it's.

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek (Elaborating/Explaining)]

And the recovery, she develops a relationship

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek]

and an affection for Captain Bennet through his nursing of her recovery, and that enables Captain Wentworth to return his focus to Anne Elliot.

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek (Elaborating/Explaining)]

But beyond the level of plot, I think that does something else. It moves Bennett away from the category of unproductivity. By allowing him to kind of take

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek]

charge of Luis's recovery, he begins to

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek (Elaborating/Explaining)]

practice the form of care that's been

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek]

associated with Anne Elliot throughout the novel.

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek (Elaborating/Explaining)]

And so there are two ways to kind of think about this. On one hand, and I'm not actually

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek]

entirely sure where I come down on this.

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek (Elaborating/Explaining)]

On one hand, it could be read as masculinizing care. On the other hand, you could also see it as further effeminating Bennett. But I. I think because of the

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek]

way that it results in their marriage.

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek (Elaborating/Explaining)]

The novel is a nape is endorsing

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek]

Ben shift toward productivity in a way that allows us to see him as being recovered from his previous state of being too disabled. And so the novel ultimately actually gives

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek (Elaborating/Explaining)]

us a framework to think about the recovery of the category of disability through

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek]

the practice of care and care ethics.

[New Books Network Closing Announcer]

That's fantastic.

[Victoria Lupaschku]

And actually, I'm very interested in grief and the ways in which it manifests and, you know, the temporality of it and all of that. And I found this actually fascinating and it connects very well to my next question as well, about care ethics. Right. And you addressed this in the last chapter, the Very Breath of Life, Respiration and the Politics of Health in the Condition of England Novel. A conclusion. And, you know, I was just curious and I really wanted to not miss asking the question about that particular idea of feminist care ethics and how they connect to the national tale, you know, the politics of the body, the politics of disability, you know, and things like that. Yeah.

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek (Elaborating/Explaining)]

So let me start with the point

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek]

about care ethics and I'll. I'll move further into the conclusion. Joan Toronto's phenomenal work on care ethics

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek (Elaborating/Explaining)]

repeatedly insists that the world would look

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek]

different if we valued care appropriately and

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek (Elaborating/Explaining)]

not just in this sort of, like,

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek]

emotionally, I'd like to buy the world a Coke kind of way, but we would restructure our social, political, cultural systems if we were to value care appropriately so that care actually becomes a political model for thinking through the way society could be organized.

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek (Elaborating/Explaining)]

And I think that actually begins to

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek]

tie all of the chapters together, that

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek (Elaborating/Explaining)]

they all kind of begin to think

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek]

about the way that the nation is constructed through the idea of the body,

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek (Elaborating/Explaining)]

while also potentially hand holding out this

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek]

possibility of an alternative vision.

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek (Elaborating/Explaining)]

And that for me is clearest in

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek]

the night, the mid 19th century genre of the Condition of England novel.

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek (Elaborating/Explaining)]

The Condition of England novel is a

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek]

temporal jump forward from. From Persuasion. So it jumps from Austin, the posthumous publication of persuasion in 1817, to the 1840s, 1850s Publications of the novels by Benjamin Disraeli Charles Dickens, and especially Elizabeth Gaskell.

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek (Elaborating/Explaining)]

And the Condition of England novel, much

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek]

like the national tale, uses the marriage

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek (Elaborating/Explaining)]

plot to begin to address questions of

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek]

social formation, social cohesion through the framework of health and illness. The novel that I focus on most specifically is Elizabeth Gaskell's north and south, which is, I like to joke with my students, essentially Pride and Prejudice set in Manchester.

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek (Elaborating/Explaining)]

And there are three key moments that

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek]

deal with respiratory illnesses. The first is Bessie Higgins, who's a factory worker who dies from what we would recognize as byssinosis, where she's inhaled fluff from the cotton fibers in the factory. The second is the protagonist's mother, Mrs.

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek (Elaborating/Explaining)]

Hale, who dies from this sort of amorphous illness that seems to be exacerbated

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek]

by the smoky and toxic environment of this northern English town, Milton. Then the third is the the factory worker John Boucher, whose violence during an industrial strike results in him being barred from the union and thus barred from work.

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek (Elaborating/Explaining)]

Because he's unable to work and support

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek]

his family, he ends up dying by suicide, drowning himself in a stream that's filled with the dye of the factory.

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek (Elaborating/Explaining)]

And these moments of respiratory illness frame the novel through what I think of

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek]

as a shared vulnerability that very clearly is rooted or not rooted in but. But reflects our shared experience of the COVID pandemic.

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek (Elaborating/Explaining)]

That despite all these narratives of self

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek]

reliance and autonomy, the role of breath and respiration and respiratory illnesses reveals the degree to which we are fundamentally dependent on each other. Mrs. Hale's upper middle class status is not enough to save her from the toxic environment of Milton. Just like even though, you know, frontline workers were obviously more exposed, the number of upper middle class people who died from the pandemic is not insignificant.

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek (Elaborating/Explaining)]

And so our class status did not

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek]

exempt us from the experience of the pandemic.

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek (Elaborating/Explaining)]

And then the novel solution, Gaskell's solution

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek]

to the social, the medical and the political crisis of the novel is actually, I think, a turn towards care ethics. And this has been argued throughout the novel by the protagonist, Margaret Hale, who insists that the masters and the mill owners and the workers are much more in. Are much more dependent on each other than the either wants to admit. And that by attaching class to class,

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek (Elaborating/Explaining)]

creating the sense of shared dependency, shared

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek]

vulnerability, and recognizing that not as a failure, but as a reality is the only way to move forward in a time of socioeconomic instability. And so that these structures of care become the antidote to the crises of 19th century capitalism and globalization,

[Victoria Lupaschku (Interjecting/Clarifying)]

there seems like a lot more of what we experienced in many ways and lessons that I guess could have been appliable. Right. In many ways and are appliable still.

[Victoria Lupaschku]

And while I have a lot of

[Victoria Lupaschku (Interjecting/Clarifying)]

questions about these things, I was wondering

[Victoria Lupaschku]

whether there's anything that was not mentioned so far. And you think it's important to stay with our listeners?

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek (Elaborating/Explaining)]

Yeah, I mean, I think one of the things I hope that this book

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek]

does is, is

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek (Elaborating/Explaining)]

help think through what

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek]

Sari Altshuler has identified as the humanistic competencies. In her phenomenal book the Medical Imagination, Altshuler talks about the way that the humanities are often sidelined in medical education, in pre health education, as teaching soft

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek (Elaborating/Explaining)]

skills that are important but not really

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek]

measurable and therefore hard to define, hard to evaluate, hard to put into the curriculum. They're not as important as basic systems knowledge for medical education and instead they

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek (Elaborating/Explaining)]

simply teach sort of sympathy or empathy. And what Alts Schuler argues is that, no, what we need to insist on is that the humanities, these humanistic competencies, skills of narrative, of ethics, of sitting in situations where there isn't an obvious answer, of deliberation, are just as important and just as valid. And I hope that this book kind

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek]

of speaks obviously to academic audiences, but also begins to provide a methodological way for thinking about how we use literature

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek (Elaborating/Explaining)]

to think through the social complexities that

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek]

shape our individual, our collective and our social experiences of health.

[Victoria Lupaschku]

I absolutely support that and I really hope it, it reaches as many, you know, professionals and academics as well. And you know, to that end, I also feel like we've taken a lot of your time, so I'm wondering whether you could tell us what you're working on right now or, you know, projects you would like to do in the future if given the time to do it.

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek (Elaborating/Explaining)]

So the next book project I'm working on is an extension of this broad argument. I'm tracing the politics of care and the expectation of care in 18th century

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek]

Literature from Bernie to Austin. And what I'm trying to argue for

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek (Elaborating/Explaining)]

is not only that care provides a reframing of our political understanding, but, but that that happens through a shared expectation and obligation to care.

[Victoria Lupaschku]

That is fascinating and I really hope

[Victoria Lupaschku (Interjecting/Clarifying)]

it, it gets published very soon so, so we can talk about it. No pressure, of course, but that's. Well, I hope you know, it informs

[Victoria Lupaschku]

also some courses that you're teaching or, you know, other articles that are soon

[Victoria Lupaschku (Interjecting/Clarifying)]

to come out so that we get access to it. Sorry, I interrupted you.

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek (Elaborating/Explaining)]

No, not at all. There's an article that I hope will

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek]

be forthcoming soon on failures of care and the Gothic. That should help begin some of my thinking through this project.

[Victoria Lupaschku (Interjecting/Clarifying)]

That's, that's really interesting. And I do have students who are very interested in the Gothic, so I'll keep an eye out. That's very nice. And, you know, with that, I want

[Victoria Lupaschku]

to thank you very much for talking to us today, and I really look

[Victoria Lupaschku (Interjecting/Clarifying)]

forward to more conversations like this in the future.

[New Books Network Closing Announcer]

Thank you for listening to this episode of the New Books Network. We are an academic podcast network with the mission of public education. If you liked this episode, please share it with a friend and rate us on your preferred podcast platform. You can browse all of our episodes on our website, newbooks network.com connect with us on Instagram and Bluesky with the handle ebooksnetwork, and subscribe to our weekly Substack newsletter at newbooksnetwork.substack.com to get episode recommendations straight to your inbox.

[Dr. Matthew L. Reznicek (Elaborating/Explaining)]

Sa.