Syphilis in Victorian Literature and Culture

Monika Pietrzak-Franger is Visiting Professor at the University of Hamburg, Germany. She has published widely on Victorian and neo-Victorian studies, gender, medicine, visual culture and adaptation. She is author of The Male Body and Masculinity (2007), editor of Women, Beauty, and Fashion (2014) and co-editor of Neo-Victorianism and Globalisation (2015), Disease, Communication and the Ethics of (In)Visibility (2014), and Reflecting on Darwin (2014).

Introduction: Ways of Seeing.- Chapter 1: Aetiology and Etymology: Concepts, Bodies, Media.- Chapter 2: Recognizing Syphilis: Pornographic Knowledge and the Politics of Explanation.- Chapter 3: Facing Pathology: Modern (Re)Production of Difference.- Chapter 4: Prophylaxis and Treatment: Geopolitics of Differentiation.- Chapter 5: (Eugenic) Utopias: National Future and Individual Suffering.- Conclusion: "Uncomfortable Proximity" and the Ethics of Display.- Bibliography.- Index.

"The book offers an ambitious and impressively researched study of syphilis in late Victorian Britain. ... Pietrzak-Franger has produced an impressive and insightful piece of research ... . the monograph is a rewarding read, offering various avenues for further research, not only for scholars working in Victorian studies and the medical humanities, but for anyone interested in the intersections of literature, culture, visual studies and the history of medicine." (Sarah Schäfer-Althaus, Anglia, Vol. (139) 1, 2021)
"Syphilis in Victorian Literature and Culture is a thoughtful, well-researched, and provocative piece of research that uncovers the complexities of the representation of syphilis, its subtle and not so subtle symbolic functions in Victorian culture, and the part it plays still today in articulating social and political anxieties about nationhood and identity." (Jane Desmarais, English Literature in Transition, Vol. 63 (1), 2020)
"This work provides a useful lense for Victorian perspectives on syphilis, offering the potential for parallels to be drawn with more recent times. ... Pietrzak-Franger has produceda comprehensive and incisive piece of criticism, made all the more impressive for previous lack of attention to the cultural meanings of syphilis." (Joe Holloway, The British Society for Literature and Science, bsls.ac.uk, February, 2018)