Inspiration and Insanity in British Poetry

Inspiration and Insanity in British Poetry
Author :
Publisher : Springer
Total Pages : 253
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9783030216719
ISBN-13 : 3030216713
Rating : 4/5 (713 Downloads)

Book Synopsis Inspiration and Insanity in British Poetry by : Joseph Crawford

Download or read book Inspiration and Insanity in British Poetry written by Joseph Crawford and published by Springer. This book was released on 2019-07-24 with total page 253 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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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