The Case between medicine and literature: a theoretical tool. Conversation with Paolo Tortonese

Abstract

Starting from the last recent publication edited by Tortonese (Le Cas médical. Entre norme et exception, Garnier 2020), the interview dwells on the hermeneutic scope of the ‘case’, as a figure laying between literature and medicine, with particular focus on the dialogical structure of the nineteenth-century novel. The interview then expands to methodological issues, calling into question the current validity of the Foucauldian approach, marked by a strong ideological drive, and the potential role of literary sciences in the Digital Humanities landscape.