Illness as Metaphor
E662540
Illness as Metaphor is a 1978 critical essay by Susan Sontag that examines how metaphorical language surrounding diseases like cancer and tuberculosis shapes cultural attitudes and stigmatizes the ill.
All labels observed (1)
| Label | Occurrences |
|---|---|
| Illness as Metaphor canonical | 2 |
How this entity was disambiguated
This entity first appeared as the object of triple T7390287 — resolving that mention is where its identity was fixed. The disambiguator weighed these candidate entities and picked the highlighted one (or “None”, minting a new entity). This is how homonymy is resolved: the same surface form can point to different entities.
NED1
Entity disambiguation (via context triple)
gpt-5-mini-2025-08-07
Target entity: Illness as Metaphor Context triple: [Susan Sontag, notableWork, Illness as Metaphor]
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A.
The Collected Poems of Sylvia Plath
The Collected Poems of Sylvia Plath is a posthumously published volume that gathers the complete poetic works of the American poet Sylvia Plath, showcasing her development from early writings to her most famous and final poems.
-
B.
Life Is a Fatal Disease: Collected Poems 1962–1995
Life Is a Fatal Disease: Collected Poems 1962–1995 is a poetry collection by Native American writer and scholar Paula Gunn Allen that spans over three decades of her work, exploring themes of identity, spirituality, and Indigenous experience.
-
C.
I Sing the Body Electric
"I Sing the Body Electric" is a celebrated free-verse poem by Walt Whitman that exalts the human body and soul as sacred, democratic, and inseparable aspects of the self.
-
D.
In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens
In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens is a collection of essays by Alice Walker that explores Black women's creativity, history, and resilience through literary criticism, biography, and personal reflection.
-
E.
Milk and Honey
Milk and Honey is a 1961 Broadway musical with music and lyrics by Jerry Herman, centered on romance and new beginnings among American tourists in the newly founded state of Israel.
- F. None of above. chosen
- G. Unsure - the case is ambiguous/there is not enough information to decide.
NED2
Entity disambiguation (via description)
gpt-5-mini-2025-08-07
Target entity: Illness as Metaphor Target entity description: Illness as Metaphor is a 1978 critical essay by Susan Sontag that examines how metaphorical language surrounding diseases like cancer and tuberculosis shapes cultural attitudes and stigmatizes the ill.
-
A.
The Collected Poems of Sylvia Plath
The Collected Poems of Sylvia Plath is a posthumously published volume that gathers the complete poetic works of the American poet Sylvia Plath, showcasing her development from early writings to her most famous and final poems.
-
B.
Life Is a Fatal Disease: Collected Poems 1962–1995
Life Is a Fatal Disease: Collected Poems 1962–1995 is a poetry collection by Native American writer and scholar Paula Gunn Allen that spans over three decades of her work, exploring themes of identity, spirituality, and Indigenous experience.
-
C.
I Sing the Body Electric
"I Sing the Body Electric" is a celebrated free-verse poem by Walt Whitman that exalts the human body and soul as sacred, democratic, and inseparable aspects of the self.
-
D.
In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens
In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens is a collection of essays by Alice Walker that explores Black women's creativity, history, and resilience through literary criticism, biography, and personal reflection.
-
E.
Milk and Honey
Milk and Honey is a 1961 Broadway musical with music and lyrics by Jerry Herman, centered on romance and new beginnings among American tourists in the newly founded state of Israel.
- F. None of above. chosen
Statements (45)
| Predicate | Object |
|---|---|
| instanceOf |
essay
ⓘ
literary criticism ⓘ non-fiction book ⓘ |
| arguesThat |
diseases should be understood without metaphor
ⓘ
metaphorical thinking about illness can harm patients ⓘ |
| author | Susan Sontag NERFINISHED ⓘ |
| contrasts | cancer metaphors with tuberculosis metaphors ⓘ |
| countryOfOrigin |
United States of America
ⓘ
surface form:
United States
|
| criticizes |
romanticization of tuberculosis
ⓘ
use of war metaphors for cancer ⓘ |
| dedicatedTo | the cancer patient community ⓘ |
| firstPublishedIn | The New York Review of Books NERFINISHED ⓘ |
| focusesOn |
cultural representations of illness
ⓘ
military metaphors for disease ⓘ moralization of illness ⓘ |
| followedBy | AIDS and Its Metaphors NERFINISHED ⓘ |
| form | book-length essay ⓘ |
| genre |
critical essay
ⓘ
cultural criticism ⓘ |
| hasISBN | 9780374174439 ⓘ |
| hasReception |
considered a classic of cultural criticism
ⓘ
widely discussed in literary criticism ⓘ |
| hasTheme |
ideology in medical discourse
ⓘ
language and power ⓘ patient experience ⓘ social construction of illness ⓘ |
| historicalPeriodCovered |
19th century
ⓘ
20th century ⓘ |
| includedIn | Susan Sontag essay collections ⓘ |
| influenced |
cultural studies of disease
ⓘ
discourse on illness and stigma ⓘ medical humanities scholarship ⓘ |
| language | English ⓘ |
| mainSubject |
cancer
ⓘ
medical humanities NERFINISHED ⓘ metaphors of illness ⓘ stigma of disease ⓘ tuberculosis ⓘ |
| notableIdea |
illness metaphors shape social attitudes
ⓘ
metaphors can blame the sick ⓘ |
| originalMedium | print ⓘ |
| pageCountApprox | 100–120 pages ⓘ |
| publicationYear | 1978 ⓘ |
| publicationYearOfFollowUp | 1989 ⓘ |
| publisher | Farrar, Straus and Giroux NERFINISHED ⓘ |
How these facts were elicited
The pipeline generated the facts above by prompting gpt-5.1 with this entity's name + description and the instruction below.
Instruction
You are a knowledge base construction expert. Given a subject entity and a description of it, return factual statements that you know for the subject as a JSON list of dictionaries(triples), where keys must be "subject", "predicate" and "object". The number of facts may be very high, between 25 to 50 or more, for very popular subjects. For less popular subjects, the number of facts can be very low, like 5 or 10. # Requirements - If you don't know the subject at all, return an empty list. - If the subject is not a named entity, return an empty list. - Include at least one triple where predicate is "instanceOf". - Do not get too wordy. - Separate several objects into multiple triples with one object.
Input
Subject: Illness as Metaphor Description of subject: Illness as Metaphor is a 1978 critical essay by Susan Sontag that examines how metaphorical language surrounding diseases like cancer and tuberculosis shapes cultural attitudes and stigmatizes the ill.
Referenced by (2)
Full triples — surface form annotated when it differs from this entity's canonical label.