"Prescribing Fiction: Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., and the 'Medicated Novels'"

Karah E. Rempe

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

rempe@email.unc.edu

More so in his novels than any other form of writing-the Breakfast Table series or his verses, for example-Oliver Wendell Holmes's identities as author and physician coalesce. Holmes's novels, while situated somewhat uncomfortably as proto-realistic, provide an intriguing counterpoint to critical gestures identifying medical discourse as a foundational influence in the rise of literary realism. In what was meant as a criticism, Oliver Wendell Holmes's first novel, Elsie Venner was dubbed a "medicated novel," a term pleasing Holmes so much he addressed it in his second preface to the novel. Similarly, A Mortal Antipathy was hailed by Holmes's contemporary and fellow physician/author S. Weir Mitchell as "daringly medical."

What precisely identifies these novels as "medicated"? Certainly Holmes's subject matter is easily categorized as "medicated," considering the protagonist/patients of both Elsie Venner and A Mortal Antipathy. However, Holmes's commitment to analyze these characters and their medicalized idiosyncrasies speaks to his interest in reflecting the reality of experiences. This commitment to interpreting reality not only highlights Holmes's experimentation with realism, but situates Holmes's fiction within a cultural nexus that deemed medical authority capable and necessary to interpret reality on a large scale in nineteenth century America.

"Thomas Hardy: Architect and Author"

JoAnna Stephens Mink

Minnesota State University, Mankato

joanna.mink@mnsu.edu

My premise is the symbiotic nature of Hardy's architectural training and his use of architectural images in novels and poetry. Not merely an occupation prior to establishing his professional novel-writing career, evidence from Hardy's letters and notebooks demonstrates that his interest in architecture continued into old age and, important to literary scholarship, underlie his novels and poems. In "Memories of Church Restoration" (1906), Hardy laments his participation in earlier prevailing policy where old churches were pulled down wantonly.

The connection between Hardy's literary output and his continuing regard for architecture is close and go beyond details of building design. The young architect in A Pair of Blue Eyes expresses Hardy's conflicting attitudes towards the Victorian mania for rampant church restoration. Hardy continually presents this theme in other novels, for example, A Laodicean. In Jude the Obscure, the embodiment of Jude's life and Christminster architecture are most

closely intertwined. From 1881 almost until his death, Hardy was associated with the SPAB, and in 1897, he offered advice on restoration of the East Lulworth church tower. Slides will reinforce how this attention to architectural detail is a primary motif to develop his themes in his poetry.

"How to Survive Twentieth-Century American Society: A Novel Handbook from the

Labor Wars" Jay Miller

Wayne State University ad5764@wayne.edu

William Trautmann's 1922 novel, Riot, chronicles the efforts of factory workers to overthrow the existing social order of industrial feudalism and establish the new order of industrial democracy. A labor organizer by day (who helped found the Industrial Workers of the World) and a fiction writer by night, Trautmann authored the only known novel to emerge from the 1909 Pressed Steel Strike in

McKees Rocks, Pennsylvania. Translating his experiences into fiction, Trautmann wrote Riot as a handbook for how to organize labor in the repressive social-political climate of the Red Scare world of the 1920s.

Trautmann participated in the 1909 Pressed Steel Strike in McKees Rocks, where 5,000 workers comprising nearly 20 nationalities struck over wages and conditions in the plant nicknamed, the "Slaughterhouse." A confrontational climate in the strike zone led to violent clashes between police forces and strikers. Eventually a gun battle erupted between police and strikers that left a dozen dead. Between 1912 and 1920, Trautmann wrote Riot as a means of

conveying to workers alternative strategies of organization which might shield them from employer violence and political repression.