Tuberculosis in Russian Culture

[Joe Andrew]

Dear SEELANGERS

Can anyone help with the following query from a postgrad?

Many thanks

Joe


Do you happen to know of any specifically Russian cultural sybolism attached to TB/ consumption? 
So far it looks to me as if the stereotypes in Russian 19th century lit are (admittedly, slightly eccentric) 
appropriations of Western Romantic consumptive stereotypes. I wonder whether you know of any special 
significance in the Church (consumptive Russian saints? a holy death/ sign of God's favour, 
as it is in English Protestantism?).
 
I'm working on the assumption that literate Russians were so immersed in 
Western literary chliches for so long that, if there ever was a uniquely 
Russian consumptive myth, it was well assimilated into the Western myth by 
the time Dostoevsky wrote The Idiot. According to Clark Lawlor's cultural 
history of TB, it really is a Western phenomenon & doesn't exist 
elsewhere, even in countries that have a lot of TB.
 

----------------------
Joe Andrew
j.m.andrew at lang.keele.ac.uk

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