The simulation of sickness intrigued British writers from the very beginning of the eighteenth century, attracting attention within a wide range of social spheres. Drawing upon texts from the fields of literature, medicine, theology, welfare policy, the military, and the law courts, this interdisciplinary thesis combines close textual analysis with an examination of social and cultural contexts in order to explain why the issue of feigned illness became such a prevalent and enduring source of debate in eighteenth-century Britain. Both the allure and the threat of simulated sickness lay in the ability of ill health to confer power upon the sufferer. On the one hand ill health might operate as a signifier of social or spiritual importance, yet sickness also functioned as a source of practical power, enabling emotional manipulation, exemption from social duties, and access to resources. The perceived benefits of ill health made the identification of simulated illness a matter of importance, yet the subject would not have attracted such attention were it not for prevailing doubts as to the legibility of the body. As this thesis indicates, the varied attitudes towards and representations of simulated sickness provide fascinating insights into the preoccupations of writers of different spheres and periods. Nevertheless, broader trends in attitudes towards bodily legibility and feigned illness are visible. Early eighteenth-century writers were generally wary of trusting external appearances, while the middle decades of the century were marked by an expression of faith in the natural legibility of the body, as demonstrated by the fashion for the literature of sensibility, acting through feeling, and the medico-literary rhetoric of nerves. Renewed scepticism towards the close of the century resulted in growing debates about the duty of medical practitioners to detect feigned illness, and the methods by which this might be accomplished. While the treatment of the subject evolved, its continued relevance highlights a sustained cultural preoccupation with the legibility of the body and its potential to mislead or even deceive, a subject that continued to fascinate writers to the very end of the eighteenth century.

L’objectif de cette thèse est d’analyser les écritures de personnes atteintes du cancer. La première partie de notre travail se focalise sur la description des caractéristiques des six ouvrages constituant notre corpus. Nous proposons de les nommer « autopathographies », c’est-à-dire de les définir comme des récits rétrospectifs en prose qu'une personne fait de sa propre maladie, dans lesquels il y a identité entre l’expérience de maladie de l’auteur (tel qu’il figure par son nom sur la couverture), celle du narrateur du récit et celle du malade dont on parle. Le rapport qui s’instaure entre la maladie et l’écriture est à la base de la structure interne de la deuxième et de la troisième partie de notre travail. Dans la deuxième partie, nous analysons le lien entre le cancer et l’écriture : nous démontrons le rôle du corps malade comme objet de l'écriture, mais aussi comme cause et source, dans la mesure où l’attention au corps et à son langage façonne les récits. Le langage choisi pour décrire le cancer est l’objet de l’analyse menée dans la troisième partie. En nous basant sur la segmentation faite dans la deuxième partie, nous identifions les métaphores mobilisées par les patients pour décrire la maladie et le parcours de soins. Notre travail démontre l’existence d’une écriture basée sur l’expérience directe de patients qui enrichit le langage pour « dire » le cancer et la représentation de cette maladie. En annexe se trouvent le fruit de nos entretiens inédits avec Giacomo Cardaci, Cristina Piga et Melania Rizzoli, auteurs de trois des autopathographies analysées. / The aim of our work is to investigate the narrative of people diagnosed with cancer. The first part of our study focusses on the description of the characteristics of the six works composing our corpus. We define them « autopathographies », meaning « retrospective prose narrative written by a real person concerning his or hers own illness experience »; in these narratives the experience of illness of the author (whose name designates a real person), the one of the narrator and of the one of principal character are identical. The relationship between cancer and writing is the basis of the structure of the second and of the third part of our research. The aim of the second part is to elucidate the link between cancer and writing; we prove that the diseased body is the topic, cause and source of the autopathographies, since the attention accorded to the diseased body models the story. In the third part of my PhD we focus on the language used to describe cancer. The analysis done in the second part is a starting point to identify the metaphors used by the patients to describe cancer and their experience of illness. Our work demonstrates the existence of a narrative based on the patients’ illness experiences and this narrative enriches the language used to “tell” cancer and its representation. Appendices: synopsis of the autopathographies and interviews of Giacomo Cardaci, Cristina Piga and Melania Rizzoli.