Introduction: Retrospective Diagnosis: Medicine and Post-Imperial Literature

Abstract

The general introduction to the book outlines the critical, cultural and literary contexts of post-imperial fiction, the origins and growth in popularity of the Raj Revival, and the continued, ongoing British fascination with the vanished world of Empire. It considers the recent return to debates over Empire in the public sphere, situating its analysis as informed by nostalgia, historical fiction and the politics of cultural representation. The introduction also outlines the critical medical humanities framework of the book in detail, exploring how medicine is a common thematic link between the real and imagined history of Empire in print cultures past and present. Moreover, the introduction places the book’s major authors (J. G. Farrell, Paul Scott, Ruth Prawer Jhabvala and Salman Rushdie) analysed throughout the chapters within their historical and critical contexts, exploring how literary critics and biographers have appraised their work to date, how India was a defining leitmotif of their work in this period, and how their shared emphasis on the theme of medicine and health unites their work in a way that has not been considered from a scholarly perspective before.