Presentation Schedule
Moral Contagion: Syphilis, Surveillance, and the Diseased Body in Neoclassical Literature and Art (103193)
Session Chair: Afra Alshiban
Monday, 11 May 2026 10:45
Session: Session 1
Room: Room G405 (4F)
Presentation Type: Oral Presentation
This study examines the representation of venereal disease, particularly syphilis, as a moral, medical, and aesthetic construct in Neoclassical literature and art. It situates depictions of infection within the broader intellectual climate of the Enlightenment, a period that sought rational order yet remained preoccupied with corruption, excess, and decay. The analysis reveals that representations of disease across poetry, fiction, and visual art constituted a shared cultural language that intertwined the vocabularies of medicine, morality, and art. Through close readings of works by Jonathan Swift, John Wilmot (Earl of Rochester), John Gay, Tobias Smollett, and James Boswell, alongside visual narratives by William Hogarth and James Gillray, the study demonstrates how the infected body became a site where moral allegory and medical realism converged. Integrating perspectives from the history of medicine, art history, and literary theory, the paper engages with thinkers such as Michel Foucault, Julia Kristeva, and Susan Sontag to argue that the discourse of venereal disease operated simultaneously as a clinical observation and a mechanism of moral surveillance. It filled a critical gap in scholarship by bridging textual and visual depictions of disease and by reconnecting literary metaphor with medical practice. The study concludes that in the Neoclassical imagination, syphilis was more than a pathological condition: it was a cultural instrument through which eighteenth-century Britain diagnosed itself, exposing the contradictions between reason and desire, virtue and vice, knowledge and decay.
Authors:
Afra Alshiban, Al Imam University, Saudi Arabia
About the Presenter(s)
AFRA ALSHIBAN is a professor at Al Imam Mohammad Ibn Saud University in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
See this presentation on the full schedule – Monday Schedule
Conference Comments & Feedback
Place a comment using your LinkedIn profileShare this Presentation
Comments
Powered by WP LinkPress