Unsound Elegy: Breast Cancer in The Dying Animal by Philip Roth and Elegy by Isabel Coixet

Abstract

This chapter analyzes and compares representations of breast cancer in The Dying Animal (2001), a short novel by the American writer Philip Roth, and its film adaptation Elegy (2008), by the Spanish director Isabel Coixet. Roth and Coixet both simultaneously engage in and resist the sentimentality of the marketplace culture surrounding breast cancer, either by downplaying or by highlighting the concrete, physical manifestations of the disease. Perceived as a quintessentially feminine disease—even though it also affects men—the representation of breast cancer by an author such as Philip Roth, sometimes described as a misogynist, and the recasting of his story by a female filmmaker crystallize debates surrounding the impact that such narratives have on the wider public’s understanding of the disease and its sufferers.