Poetics of Madness: Aspects of Literary Insanity

This course surveys a wide range of literary texts with a view to tracing the long process of transition from pre-modern to modern conceptions of madness on the one hand, and to identifying the symbolic logic and discursive modalities that underlie its respective representations on the other. Spanning several centuries of artistic preoccupation with the alienated mind, these texts will serve as points of reference in a focused exploration of the relationship between insanity and literature, as it has been shaped by social dynamics, cultural norms, philosophical ideas, and medical theories. Authors include Euripides, Erasmus, Shelley, Dostoyevsky, Stevenson, and Woolf.