Overview
- Bridges the historical gap between studies of Romantic poetry and madness
- Considers a varied group of writers to offer an inclusive portrait of the period’s attitudes toward poetic inspiration and insanity
- Examines a crucial transitional period in medical psychology and its influence on poetry
Part of the book series: Palgrave Studies in Literature, Science and Medicine (PLSM)
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Table of contents (7 chapters)
Keywords
About this book
This book explores the ways in which poetic inspiration came to be associated with madness in early nineteenth-century Britain. By examining the works of poets such as Barrett, Browning, Clare, Tennyson, Townshend, and the Spasmodics in relation to the burgeoning asylum system and shifting medical discourses of the period, it investigates the ways in which Britain’s post-Romantic poets understood their own poetic vocations within a cultural context that insistently linked poetic talent with illness and insanity. Joseph Crawford examines the popularity of mesmerism among the writers of the era, as an alternative system of medicine that provided a more sympathetic account of the nature of poetic genius, and investigates the persistent tension, found throughout the literary and medical writings of the period, between the Romantic ideal of the poet as a transcendent visionary genius and the ‘medico-psychological’ conception of poets as mere case studies in abnormal neurological development.
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Authors and Affiliations
About the author
Joseph Crawford is Senior Lecturer in English Literature at the University of Exeter, UK. His previous books include Raising Milton’s Ghost (2011), Gothic Fiction and the Invention of Terrorism (2013), and The Twilight of the Gothic (2014).
Bibliographic Information
Book Title: Inspiration and Insanity in British Poetry
Book Subtitle: 1825–1855
Authors: Joseph Crawford
Series Title: Palgrave Studies in Literature, Science and Medicine
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-21671-9
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan Cham
eBook Packages: Literature, Cultural and Media Studies, Literature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)
Copyright Information: The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019
Hardcover ISBN: 978-3-030-21670-2Published: 05 August 2019
Softcover ISBN: 978-3-030-21673-3Published: 14 August 2020
eBook ISBN: 978-3-030-21671-9Published: 24 July 2019
Series ISSN: 2634-6435
Series E-ISSN: 2634-6443
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: VII, 248
Topics: Nineteenth-Century Literature, Poetry and Poetics, History of Science, Philosophy of Mind, Cognitive Psychology