Diagnosis

The trope of critical reading as diagnosis draws on health humanities scholarship to enable responsive, collaborative readings that pair attention form (symptoms and signs) with a meticulous address how author, publisher, text, reader co-create diverse strands meaning within different settings. This model can assess most Victorian texts feature spectrum overlapping literary genres, these genres are formed in the working partnerships readers create across changing contexts. text itself becomes not an inert object be cataloged but living, organism. Diagnostic both ostensible meanings passage other possibilities latent or new arise circulate audiences. It also insists embodied, thus bridging print culture studies by reminding us know cognitive, affective, physical interlocutors. Medical usefully addresses just disease many human conformations, and—as texts—it opens up relationship between caregiver patient evolves conditions change. Overall, diagnostic encourages more versatile inclusive understanding scholarly work.