Blackwell Reference Online

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Illness narratives are mostly thought of as sick people's narratives about their illnesses and the effect on their lives. Illness narratives can also include the narratives of relatives about the effects the illnesses have had on their relationships with the sick people and on their own lives. They often occur as oral narratives in everyday conversations with family, friends, and colleagues. They can also appear as written and published biographical or autobiographical accounts of illnesses or pathographies ( Hawkins 1993 ). Both oral and written illness narratives help to configure and articulate experiences and events that change one's life and its prerequisites as a result of illness. Research on the forms and functions of illness narratives expanded rapidly during the last decades of the twentieth century ( Bury 2001 ). The medical sociologist Arthur Frank (1995) suggests that this interest has to do with ill persons in late modernity wanting to have their own suffering recognized in its individual particularity. Patients’ illness narratives capture the individual's suffering in an everyday context, in contrast to the medical narratives that reflect the needs of the medical professions and institutions. The research on illness narratives is marked by diversity in the theoretical perspectives and methods that are brought to bear on a variety of problems. The field covers interview ... log in or subscribe to read full text