The Master of Arts in Medical Humanities and Bioethics program presents
A Montgomery Lecture
with
Hosanna Krienke, PhD (Northwestern University)
Research Fellow for the "Diseases of Modern Life" Project
Saint Anne's College, Oxford University
Wilkie Collins and the Health Benefits of Leisure-Reading
Why read fiction? Many thinkers have argued that fiction can teach moral and ethical lessons, or widen readers’ experiences of the world. But for some Victorian writers, including sensation novelist Wilkie Collins (1824-1889), fiction offered a vital opportunity to “do nothing.” This talk will examine how Victorians talked about the value of leisure-reading as a healthful, and even therapeutic, practice that could recuperate readers from the endemic stresses of modern life. Using Collins’s 1868 novel The Moonstone as an example, we will ultimately consider how such defenses of ‘doing nothing,’ though seemingly opposed to moral lessons, could also lead to surprising ethical insights