Literature & Madness 1780-1900

(3 Credit Hours) · Undergraduate

Sometimes called the ‘English Malady’, madness in the long 19th century was an unstable term, subject to shifting definitions, and encompassing many different mental states. This course examines the role of madness in the Anglophone literary tradition, and how that tradition intersects with medical accounts and psychiatric survivor experiences. There is much debate in the period over the behavioral and physiological indications of madness, and even whether it could be diagnosed at all. The scholarly fields of disability studies and mad studies ask important questions about the kind of cultural work that madness does. This course explores the language and cultures around madness, melancholy, hysteria, monomania and other conditions in the context of contemporary debates on gender, normalcy, and social order.