A Literary History of Madness

The course will largely take the form of a seminar, with less lecturing than discussion. The course will be structured thematically around "madness" and its various versions in literary history, berserk fury, religious exaltation, demonic possession, melancholia and paranoia, a philosophical conceit, a psychiatric concept and so on, with an equally varied range of attitudes from stigmatization to exaltation. While English literature will be the most represented, the course will also engage with other literatures, and with complementary discursive practices such as philosophy, anthropology and psychiatry. The comparative focus will allow for a significant amount of freedom in the ways single students will choose to pursue certain themes over others.