Tag: The Death of Ivan Ilyich
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Leo Tolstoy: Medical
Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910), one of literature’s greatest novelists, lived through an age of intense change in medicine. Nineteenth-century Russia was a country caught between ancient folk remedies and the rise of modern scientific practice, and Tolstoy himself straddled both worlds. His health was fragile, his writings repeatedly explored themes of illness, suffering, and death, and…
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The anatomy of bibliotherapy: How fiction heals, part III
Dustin Grinnell Boston, Massachusetts, United States A cure for loneliness In the video “What is Literature For?” produced by The School of Life, author Alain de Botton claims that books are a cure for loneliness. Since we cannot always say what we are really thinking in civilized conversations, literature often describes who we genuinely are more…