Narrative Medicine and the Uses of Literature

This article offers an overview of narrative medicine as a field, exploring the interdisciplinary possibilities at the intersection of literature and medicine. The intensified biotechnologization of medicine in the latter half of the twentieth century has prompted increasing calls to “humanize” medical practices. In response, medical humanists have introduced elements of literary studies into medical education, emphasizing the narrative form and its attention to particularity as an antidote to the reductionism of biomedical hegemony. While these efforts have achieved institutional success, early models of narrative medicine have recently come under critique from emerging strands of second-wave medical humanities―that is, health humanities and critical medical humanities―for instrumentalizing literary studies without sufficiently engaging humanities methodologies. Critics argue that traditional approaches to narrative medicine often rely on a limited understanding of what narrative form is, centering on a culturally specific, individualist model of self typically associated with the first-person voice. Recent scholarship, drawing on more nuanced understandings of narrative form and literary theory, seeks to broaden the scope of narrative medicine beyond the confines of the clinical encounter, exploring the diverse ways narrative practices can shape, critique, and reimagine medical knowledge and care.