The Most Dreadful Visitation: Male Madness in Victorian Fiction
Valerie Pedlar
Nov 2006 · Liverpool University Press
Ebook
192
Pages
About this ebook
An Open Access edition of this book is available on the Liverpool University Press website and the OAPEN library.
Victorian literature is rife with scenes of madness, with mental disorder functioning as everything from a simple plot device to a commentary on the foundations of Victorian society. But while madness in Victorian fiction has been much studied, most scholarship has focused on the portrayal of madness in women; male mental disorder in the period has suffered comparative neglect. Valerie Pedlar corrects this imbalance in The ‘Most Dreadful Visitation.’ This extraordinary study explores a wide range of Victorian writings to consider the relationship between the portrayal of mental illness in literary works and the portrayal of similar disorders in the writings of doctors and psychologists. Pedlar presents in-depth studies of Dickens’s Barnaby Rudge, Tennyson’s Maud, Wilkie Collins’s Basil, and Trollope’s He Knew He Was Right, considering each work in the context of Victorian understandings—and fears—of mental degeneracy.
Victorian literature is rife with scenes of madness, with mental disorder functioning as everything from a simple plot device to a commentary on the foundations of Victorian society. But while madness in Victorian fiction has been much studied, most scholarship has focused on the portrayal of madness in women; male mental disorder in the period has suffered comparative neglect. Valerie Pedlar corrects this imbalance in The ‘Most Dreadful Visitation.’ This extraordinary study explores a wide range of Victorian writings to consider the relationship between the portrayal of mental illness in literary works and the portrayal of similar disorders in the writings of doctors and psychologists. Pedlar presents in-depth studies of Dickens’s Barnaby Rudge, Tennyson’s Maud, Wilkie Collins’s Basil, and Trollope’s He Knew He Was Right, considering each work in the context of Victorian understandings—and fears—of mental degeneracy.
An Open Access edition of this book is available on the Liverpool University Press website and the OAPEN library.
Victorian literature is rife with scenes of madness, with mental disorder functioning as everything from a simple plot device to a commentary on the foundations of Victorian society....
About the author
Valerie Pedlar teaches at the Open University in Manchester. She has contributed to a number of publications including 'The Nineteenth Century Novels: Identities' (ed. Dennis Walder Routledge 2001.)
Valerie Pedlar teaches at the Open University in Manchester. She has contributed to a number of publications including 'The Nineteenth Century Novels: Identities' (ed. Dennis Walder Routledge 2001.)
Rate this ebook
Tell us what you think.
Reading information
Smartphones and tablets
Install the Google Play Books app for Android and iPad/iPhone. It syncs automatically with your account and allows you to read online or offline wherever you are.
Laptops and computers
You can listen to audiobooks purchased on Google Play using your computer's web browser.
eReaders and other devices
To read on e-ink devices like Kobo eReaders, you'll need to download a file and transfer it to your device. Follow the detailed Help Center instructions to transfer the files to supported eReaders.
