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Madness Past and Present

COM5207

2020-2021

Course Outline and Reading Lists

Dr Annabel Cox (a.cox@qmul.ac.uk)

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Content Description

This course examines how madness has been constructed and represented in culture from the classical period to the twenty-first century. It looks at both medical and popular understandings and representations of madness prevailing at crucial historical moments, and analyses the ways in which madness as a theme has been explored and exploited in a wide selection of genres including autobiography, essays, novels, short stories and drama.

Learning Outcomes

Upon completion of the course students will be able to:

• understand key issues related to the cultural history of madness • reflect critically upon historical, social and cultural changes in attitudes towards

madness and the mad • relate cultural representations of madness to their immediate socio-historical

contexts • compare and contrast representations of the theme of madness across different

literary genres • demonstrate knowledge of, and make theoretically informed connections

between, texts of different periods, genres and cultures • construct cogent and sophisticated critical essays with evidence of individual

study and initiative • demonstrate familiarity with basic research and bibliographical skills • formulate theoretically informed arguments and express these clearly and

effectively

Assessment Assessment: Deadline:

1500-word essay (30%)

11.55pm Monday 02 November 2020 (start of week 7)

2500-word essay (60%)

11.55pm Friday 18 December 2020

50 minute test (10%) You MUST follow the guidelines laid out in your Student Handbook when writing essays, referencing sources and compiling bibliographies.

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Course Structure and Outline WEEK FORMAT TOPIC and TEXT 1 Lecture Course outline and introduction

Seminar Madness and medicine in Antiquity (Hippocrates and Galen:

materials provided on QM+ & in seminar)

2 Lecture Madness and the medieval period

Seminar The Book of Margery Kempe (selected chapters only – see the ‘Primary Reading’ section of the Module Outline)

3 Lecture Madness, gender and genre in The Book Margery Kempe

Seminar The Book Margery Kempe (selected chapters only – as above)

4 Lecture Don Quixote: Renaissance approaches to madness

Seminar Don Quixote (selected chapters only – as above)

5 Lecture Don Quixote: literature and influence

Seminar Don Quixote (selected chapters only – as above) and ‘Stan’ – images of fanaticism

6 Lecture Madness and medicine in the 18th Century

Seminar The Madness of George III (the play – NOT the film script)

7 READING WEEK 8 Lecture Madness and society in the 19th Century

Seminar ‘The Diary of a Madman’ – Gogol

9 Lecture Madness and society continued: the early 20th Century

Seminar Xun’s ‘Diary of a Madman’, and comparative readings of Gogol and

Xun 10 Lecture Psychoanalytical Developments in the 20th Century

Seminar Comparative readings of Freud’s ‘Mourning and Melancholy’ and

Kristeva’s ‘A Counterdepressant’ 11 Lecture Current legal, medical and social perspectives on mental health

Seminar Poppy Shakespeare

12 Lecture Conclusions

Seminar Test, conclusions

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Primary Texts Week One: Hippocrates and Galen – HANDOUTS PROVIDED IN SEMINAR/ON QM+ Weeks Two and Three: Kempe, Margery (1985) The Book of Margery Kempe trans. Barry Windeatt

(Harmondsworth: Penguin) [c. 1450] SELECTED CHAPTERS ONLY: The Proem, Chapters 1-13, 17, 22, 28, 35&36, 44, 75 Weeks Four and Five: Cervantes, Miguel de Don Quixote (2001) trans. John Rutherford (New York: Penguin)

[1605] (This is the recommended translation, but an older English translation is available for

free at http://www.gutenberg.org, and the translation by Edith Grossman is very good too)

SELECTED CHAPTERS ONLY: The First Part: Prologue, Chapters 1-16, 23-26 Week Six: Bennett, Alan (1992) The Madness of George III (London: Faber and Faber) PLEASE MAKE SURE THAT YOU READ THE PLAY AND NOT THE FILM

SCRIPT (THEY HAVE DIFFERENT TITLES SO AVOID THE MADNESS OF KING GEORGE)

Week Eight: Gogol, Nikolai (2003) ‘The Diary of a Madman’ in The Collected Tales of Nikolai

Gogol (London: Granta) [1834] ON QM+ Week Nine: Xun, Lu (1990) ‘Diary of a Madman’ in Diary of a Madman and Other Stories. trans.

William Lyell (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press) [1918] ON QM+ Week Ten: Freud, Sigmund ‘Mourning and Melancholy’ (2000) in Radden, Jennifer ed. The Nature

of Melancholy: From Aristotle to Kristeva (Oxford: OUP) [1917] ON QM+ AND Kristeva, Julia (2000) ‘A Counterdepressant’, in Radden, Jennifer ed. The Nature of

Melancholy: From Aristotle to Kristeva (Oxford: OUP) [1989] ON QM+ Weeks Eleven and Twelve: Allan, Clare (2006) Poppy Shakespeare (London: Bloomsbury)

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Critical Texts Below are some suggestions, but please conduct your own research too! Titles are either available online, at QM library, through JSTOR, or, where indicated, are provided on QM+. Margery Kempe: Freeman, Phyllis, Carly Rees Bogorad and Diane E. Sholomskas (1990) ‘Margery

Kempe, a New Theory: the Inadequacy of Hysteria and Postpartum Psychosis as Diagnostic Categories’ History of Psychiatry, 1.2.2: 169-190

Harper, Stephen (2003) ‘“So euyl to rewlyn”: Madness and Authority in The Book of

Margery Kempe,’ in Insanity, Individuals, and Society in Late-Medieval English Literature (Lewiston/Queenston/Lampeter: Edwin Mellen) ON QM+

Roffe, David (1998) ‘Perceptions of Insanity in Medieval England’

http://www.roffe.co.uk/keele.htm Roffe, David and Christine Roffe (1995) ‘Looking Back: Madness and Care in the

Community: A Medieval Perspective’ British Medical Journal 311: 1708-1712 Don Quixote: Green, Otis H. (1957) ‘El Ingenioso Hidalgo’ Hispanic Review 25: 175-93. ON QM+ Heiple, Daniel L. (1979) ‘Renaissance Medical Psychology in Don Quijote’ Journal of

Ideologies and Literature 9: 65-72 ON QM+ Johnson, Carroll B. (1983) Madness and Lust: A Psychoanalytical Approach to Don

Quijote (Berkeley: University of California Press) Quint, David (2005) Cervantes’s Novel of Modern Times: A New Reading of Don

Quijote (Princeton: Princeton University Press) Murillo, L. A. (1990), A Critical Introduction to Don Quixote (New York: Peter Lang) Sobré, J. M. (1976) ‘Don Quixote, the Hero Upside-Down’ Hispanic Review, 44: 127-

41 The Madness of George III: Digby, Anne (1985) ‘Moral Treatment and the Retreat, 1796-1846’ in William Bynum,

Frederick, Roy Porter and Michael Shepherd, eds. The Anatomy of Madness: Essays in the History of Psychiatry: Vol. 2: Institutions and Society (London: Tavistock)

Porter, Roy (1987) Mind Forg’d Manacles: A History of Madness in England from the

Restoration to the Regency (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press)

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Schmidt, Jeremy (2004) ‘Melancholy and the Therapeutic Language of Moral Philosophy in Seventeenth-Century Thought’ Journal of the History of Ideas, 65.4: 583-601 ON QM+

‘The Diary of a Madman’ (Gogol): Gregg, Richard (1999), ‘Gogol’s “Diary of a Madman”: The Fallible Scribe and the

Sinister Bulge’ The Slavic and East European Journal, Vol. 43, No. 3: 439-451 ON QM+

Gustafson, Richard F. (1965) ‘The Suffering Usurper: Gogol’s “Diary of a Madman”’,

The Slavic and East European Journal, 9.3: 268-280 ON QM+ Maguire, Robert (1994) ‘Place Within: “Diary of a Madman”’ in Exploring Gogol

(Stanford: Stanford University Press) ON QM+ Peace, Richard (1981) The Enigma of Gogol: An Examination of the Writings of N .V.

Gogol and their place in the Russian Literary Tradition (Cambridge: CUP) ON QM+

‘Diary of a Madman’ (Xun): Chinnery, J. D. (1960) ‘The Influence of Western Literature on Lu Xun’s “Diary of a

Madman”’ Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 23.2: 309-322 ON QM+

Hanan, Patrick (1974) ‘The Technique of Lu Hsün's Fiction’ Harvard Journal of Asiatic

Studies 34: 53-96 ON QM+ Huters, Theodor (1994) ‘The Stories of Lu Xun’ in Barbara S. Miller, ed. Masterworks

of Asian Literature in Comparative Perspective: a Guide for Teaching (London: Sharpe) ON QM+

Tang, Xiaobing (1992) ‘Lu Xun’s “Diary of a Madman” and a Chinese Modernism’,

PMLA 107, 5: 1222-34 ON QM+ Wong, Yoon-Wah (1988) Essays on Chinese Literature: A Comparative Approach

(Singapore: Singapore University Press) ON QM+ Freud: Bradbury, Mary (2001) ‘Freud’s Mourning and Melancholia’ Morality 6, 2: 212-18 ON

QM+ Cahart-Harris, Robin L et al. (2008) ‘Mourning and Melancholia Revisited:

Correspondences between Principles of Freudian Metapsychology and Empirical Findings in Neuropsychiatry’ Annals of General Psychiatry, 7, 9: 1-23 ON QM+

Polmear, Caroline (2004) ‘Dying to Live: Mourning, Melancholia and the Adolescent

Process’ Journal of Child Psychotherapy, 30, 3: 263-74 ON QM+ Kristeva:

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Lechte, John (1990) ‘Art, Love, and Melancholy in the Work of Julia Kristeva’, in John Lechte and Andrew Benjamin, eds. Abjection, Melancholia and Love – The Work of Julia Kristeva (London: Routledge) ON QM+

Lechte, John (2004), ‘Love and Death by Any Other Name… (on Love and

Melancholia)’ in John Lechte and Maria Margaroni, eds. Julia Kristeva: Live Theory (London: Continuum) ON QM+

Radden, Jennifer, ed. (2000), The Nature of Melancholy: From Aristotle to Kristeva

(Oxford: OUP) McAffee, Noelle (2004) Julia Kristeva (London: Routledge) ON QM+ Smith, Anne-Marie (1998) Julia Kristeva: Speaking the Unspeakable (London: Pluto

Press) ON QM+ Poppy Shakespeare: Cox, Annabel (2014) ‘Poppy Shakespeare: Verging on the Historical’, English 63.240: 57-78 [first published online July 18 2013] ON QM+ Riggan, William (1981) Pícaros, Madmen, Naïfs, and Clowns: the Unreliable First-

Person Narrator (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press) (Also useful for Don Quixote, Gogol and Xun)

Further Reading Burton, Robert (1621) The Anatomy of Melancholy

<http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/10800> Doerner, Klaus (1981) Madmen and the Bourgeoisie: a Social History of Insanity and

Psychiatry trans. Joachim Neugroschel and Jean Steinberg (Oxford: Blackwell) Foucault, Michel (2001) Madness and Civilisation: A History of Insanity in the Age of

Reason (London: Routledge) MacDonald, Michael (1981) Mystical Bedlam: Madness, Anxiety and Healing in

Seventeenth-Century England (Cambridge: CUP) Middelfort, H. C. Erik (1980) ‘Madness and Civilisation in Early Modern Europe’, in

Barbara C. Malament, ed. After the Reformation: Essays in Honour of J. H. Hexter (Manchester: Manchester University Press)

Neely, Carol Thomas (2004) Distracted Subjects: Madness and Gender in Shakespeare

and Early Modern Culture (Ithaca and London: Cornell U P)

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Porter, Roy (1999) A Social History of Madness (London: Phoenix) Porter, Roy (2003) Madness: A Brief History (Oxford: OUP) Redmond, James (1993) Madness in Drama (CUP) Sander, Gilman (1982) Seeing the Insane (New York: John Wiley) Scull, Andrew (1993) The Most Solitary of Afflictions: Madness and Society in Britain,

1700-1900 (New Haven: Yale University Press) Shorter, Edward (1997) A History of Psychiatry: From the Age of the Asylum to the Age

of Prozac (New York: John Wiley) Shorter, Edward (2005) A Historical Dictionary of Psychiatry (New York: OUP) Showalter, Elaine (1985) The Female Malady: Women, Madness and English Culture,

1830-1980 (New York: Pantheon Books)