Gothic Diagnostics in British Fiction 1830-1897

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My dissertation will bring the history of diagnostic anxieties to the centre stage,focusing not just on the stigmatisation of deviant bodies, as has been customary in Gothicstudies, but the pathologisation of clinical processes in Gothic fiction by writers such asSamuel Warren, Anna Kingsford, Arthur Conan Doyle and Edward Berdoe. This PhD willexamine how Gothic diagnostics develop, their reaction to the developments in clinicalmethods and instruments, and the way in which they gothicise the relationship between thediagnoser and the diagnosed. Deploying a New Historicist approach and MedicalHumanities-based methodology, it will compare Gothic fiction, diagnostic manuals andmedical journals, mapping out the evolution of nineteenth-century Gothic diagnostics inmedical and literary texts to determine the synergy between the medical and literary spheres.