Madness in Literature

Madness in Literature PDF Author: Lillian Feder
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691219737
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 351

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Book Description
To probe the literary representation of the alienated mind, Lillian Feder examines mad protagonists of literature and the work of writers for whom madness is a vehicle of self-revelation. Ranging from ancient Greek myth and tragedy to contemporary poetry, fiction, and drama, Professor Feder shows how literary interpretations of madness, as well as madness itself, reflect the very cultural assumptions, values, and prohibitions they challenge.

Madness in Literature

Madness in Literature PDF Author: Lillian Feder
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691219737
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 351

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Book Description
To probe the literary representation of the alienated mind, Lillian Feder examines mad protagonists of literature and the work of writers for whom madness is a vehicle of self-revelation. Ranging from ancient Greek myth and tragedy to contemporary poetry, fiction, and drama, Professor Feder shows how literary interpretations of madness, as well as madness itself, reflect the very cultural assumptions, values, and prohibitions they challenge.

Madness in Ancient Literature

Madness in Ancient Literature PDF Author: Ainsworth O'Brien-Moore
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781494051419
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 230

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Book Description
This is a new release of the original 1924 edition.

Mind and Madness in Ancient Greece

Mind and Madness in Ancient Greece PDF Author: Bennett Simon
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 340

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Book Description


Divine Mania

Divine Mania PDF Author: Yulia Ustinova
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351581260
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 459

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Book Description
‘Our greatest blessings come to us by way of mania, provided it is given us by divine gift,’ – says Socrates in Plato’s Phaedrus. Certain forms of alteration of consciousness, considered to be inspired by supernatural forces, were actively sought in ancient Greece. Divine mania comprises a fascinating array of diverse experiences: numerous initiates underwent some kind of alteration of consciousness during mystery rites; sacred officials and inquirers attained revelations in major oracular centres; possession states were actively sought; finally, some thinkers, such as Pythagoras and Socrates, probably practiced manipulation of consciousness. These experiences, which could be voluntary or involuntary, intense or mild, were interpreted as an invasive divine power within one’s mind, or illumination granted by a super-human being. Greece was unique in its attitude to alteration of consciousness. From the perspective of individual and public freedom, the prominent position of the divine mania in Greek society reflects its acceptance of the inborn human proclivity to experience alteration of consciousness, interpreted in positive terms as god-sent. These mental states were treated with cautious respect, and in contrast to the majority of complex societies, ancient and modern, were never suppressed or pushed to the cultural and social periphery.

Whom Gods Destroy

Whom Gods Destroy PDF Author: Ruth Padel
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780691025889
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 276

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Book Description
Madness is central to Western tragedy in all epochs, but we find the origins of this centrality in early Greece: in Homeric insight into the "damage a damaged mind can do." Greece, and especially tragedy, gave the West its permanent perception of madness as violent and damaging. Drawing on her deep knowledge of anthropology, psychoanalysis, Shakespeare, and the history of madness, as well as of Greek language and literature, Ruth Padel probes the Greek language of madness, which is fundamental to tragedy: translating, making it reader-friendly to nonspecialists, and showing how Greek images continued through medieval and Renaissance societies into a "rough tragic grammar" of madness in the modern period.

Melancholy, Love, and Time

Melancholy, Love, and Time PDF Author: Peter Toohey
Publisher: University of Michigan Press
ISBN: 9780472113026
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 412

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Book Description
An examination of the effects and meaning of emotional states of distress in ancient literature

Madness

Madness PDF Author: Petteri Pietikäinen
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317484452
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 354

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Book Description
Madness: A History is a thorough and accessible account of madness from antiquity to modern times, offering a large-scale yet nuanced picture of mental illness and its varieties in western civilization. The book opens by considering perceptions and experiences of madness starting in Biblical times, Ancient history and Hippocratic medicine to the Age of Enlightenment, before moving on to developments from the late 18th century to the late 20th century and the Cold War era. Petteri Pietikäinen looks at issues such as 18th century asylums, the rise of psychiatry, the history of diagnoses, the experiences of mental health patients, the emergence of neuroses, the impact of eugenics, the development of different treatments, and the late 20th century emergence of anti-psychiatry and the modern malaise of the worried well. The book examines the history of madness at the different levels of micro-, meso- and macro: the social and cultural forces shaping the medical and lay perspectives on madness, the invention and development of diagnoses as well as the theories and treatment methods by physicians, and the patient experiences inside and outside of the mental institution. Drawing extensively from primary records written by psychiatrists and accounts by mental health patients themselves, it also gives readers a thorough grounding in the secondary literature addressing the history of madness. An essential read for all students of the history of mental illness, medicine and society more broadly.

Between Sanity and Madness

Between Sanity and Madness PDF Author: Allan V. Horwitz
Publisher:
ISBN: 019090786X
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 385

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Book Description
Since the earliest medical, philosophical, and literary texts in ancient civilizations, madness has posed some basic issues: how to separate sanity from insanity, to distinguish mental and bodily illnesses, and to specify the variety of internal and external forces that lead people to become mentally ill. This book explores the answers to these questions that have emerged over time and concludes that current portrayals are not much improved compared to those that emerged thousands of years ago. The puzzles that madness presents are likely to remain unresolved for the foreseeable future and perhaps forever.

Madness and Civilization

Madness and Civilization PDF Author: Michel Foucault
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0307833100
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 318

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Book Description
Michel Foucault examines the archeology of madness in the West from 1500 to 1800 - from the late Middle Ages, when insanity was still considered part of everyday life and fools and lunatics walked the streets freely, to the time when such people began to be considered a threat, asylums were first built, and walls were erected between the "insane" and the rest of humanity.

The Madness of Epic

The Madness of Epic PDF Author: Debra Hershkowitz
Publisher: Clarendon Press
ISBN: 0191584495
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 365

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Book Description
Madness plays a vital role in many ancient epics: not only do characters go mad, but madness also often occupies a central thematic position in the texts. In this book, Debra Hershkowitz examines from a variety of theoretical angles the representation and poetic function of madness in Greek and Latin epic from Homer through the Flavians, including individual chapters devoted to the Iliad and Odyssey, Virgil's Aeneid, Ovid's Metamorphoses, Lucan's Bellum Civile, and Statius' Thebaid. The study also addresses the difficulty of defining madness, and discusses how each epic explores this problem in a different way, finding its own unique way of conceptualizing madness. Epic madness interacts with ancient models of madness, but also, even more importantly, with previous representations of madness in the literary tradition. Likewise, the reader's response to epic madness is influenced by both ancient and modern views of madness, as well as by an awareness of intertextuality.