Revels in madness : insanity in medicine and literature / Allen Thiher.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Thiher, Allen, 1941-

Contributor:

Michigan Publishing (University of Michigan), publisher.

Series:

Corporealities

Corporealities : discourses of disability

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Literature and mental illness.

Mental illness in literature.

Mental illness--History.

Mental illness.

History.

Psychiatry--History.

Psychiatry.

Genre:

Electronic books.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (354 pages).

Place of Publication:

Ann Arbor : University of Michigan Press, c1999.

System Details:

text file

Summary:

Revels in Madness offers a history of western culture's shifting understandings of insanity as evidenced in its literature and as influenced by medical knowledge. The survey traces the period from the development of Greek medicine, and of Greek tragedy and comedy, to contemporary representations of madness as shaped by modern psychiatry and psychoanalysis and portrayed in literature. It surveys a remarkable range of writers, including Cervantes, Nerval, Rimbaud, Holderin, Charcot, Freud, and Kraepelin.

Conceptions of madness in literature have reflected the cultural assumptions of their era. During medieval times, insanity was viewed as a trial sent by God, while during the nineteenth century, it was seen simply as a sign of degenerate heredity. These two points of view represent a pre-modern and a modern understanding of madness, and the book is organized to emphasize the transition from classical theories of madness to modernity. This transition began at the end of the Enlightenment and culminates in the reactions seen in recent women's writing which challenge the postmodern understanding of madness as a fall from language or as a dysfunction of the cybernetic system that we new define as culture.

This book will interest those intrigued by the relationship between culture, medicine, and literature, both in the history of medicine and literature and in literary depictions of cognitive disabilities. Students of comparative literature or the history of science, as well at doctors, therapists, and those interested in clinical psychology will enjoy reading this book.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages [325]-335) and index.

Description based on information from the publisher.

ISBN:

9780472024476

0472110357

Publisher Number:

10.3998/mpub.16078

Access Restriction:

Restricted for use by site license.