Madness and creativity in literature and culture

"With original contributions from specialist and well-known writers including the late Roy Porter, Al Alvarez, A.S. Byatt and Pat Barker, this exciting new volume explores the relationship between mental illness and creativity in literature from medieval to modern times. Essays consider the treatment and function of madness in writing across a range of English authors, and in particular poets such as Blake and Cowper. Contributors explore the creative power of madness as literary topos, the ways mental illness may stimulate creative writing, the possibility of writing as therapy and the kinds of writing that are produced through the experience of mental illness. The essays here span the interrelated subjects of the mind, medicine and literature, and contributors are drawn from the fields of medicine, literature, philosophy, theology and creative writing."--Jacket.