“Tiene usted una enfermedad nueva, muy rara, de las de última moda … ”: the meanings of disease in Pardo Bazán’s <i>El cisne de Vilamorta</i> (1884)

This essay explores the meanings of illness in El cisne de Vilamorta (1884), a novel by Emilia Pardo Bazán where a “new and rare” disease, namely diabetes, plays an essential role in providing a framework of meaning to understand the web of physical, social and moral relations between the particular sufferer and his wider context in rural Spain during the late nineteenth century. Bridging the divide between medicine and ideology, Pardo Bazán uses the cultural experience of illness to reflect, heighten awareness and articulate criticism of biomedical matters but also of more fundamental dilemmas within the sociocultural realms, turning the trope of disease into a knowledge-generating artefact from which to imagine the prospect of change in the symbolic order. Following this idea and as proclaimed by the word’s etymology, dis-ease – lack of ease and discomfort – I argue that disease in the novel leads to a thoroughgoing dis-ease of society by prompting an encounter between reader and text through which the reader, agitated and unsettled, seeks to comprehend more fully the social experiences in front of them, therefore articulating their position in relation to the content and context of the cultural work.