Romantic Consumption: The Paradox of Fashionable Breath

The tragic disease of consumption/tuberculosis is, perhaps notoriously, a central disease of literary and artistic international Romanticism, as well as having a profound influence in wider society. Lawlor’s essay analyses the role that breath played in this phenomenon: how could breath and breathlessness possibly contribute to the valorisation of such a horrible illness? Using literary and medical works, this analysis demonstrates that the ‘reality’ (albeit variable) of consumptive breath was often overridden, overwritten, or reframed, by cultural discourses which included religious and classical concepts of breath, new and old medical models, gender and social rank.