Drugs and the Addiction Aesthetic in Nineteenth-Century Literature (Palgrave Studies in Literature, Science and Medicine)

This book explores the rise of the aesthetic category of addiction in the nineteenth century, a century that saw the development of an established medical sense of drug addiction. __Drugs and the Addiction Aesthetic in Nineteenth-Century Literature__ focuses especially on formal invention—on the uses of literary patterns for intensified, exploratory engagement with unattained possibility—resulting from literary intersections with addiction discourse. Early chapters consider how Romantics such as Thomas De Quincey created, with regard to drug habit, an idea of habitual craving that related to self-experimenting science and literary exploration; later chapters look at Victorians who drew from similar understandings while devising narratives of repetitive investigation. The authors considered include De Quincey, Percy Shelley, Alfred Tennyson, Christina Rossetti, Charles Dickens, Robert Louis Stevenson, and Marie Corelli. This book explores the rise of the aesthetic category of addiction in the nineteenth century, a century that saw the development of an established medical sense of drug addiction. Drugs and the Addiction Aesthetic in Nineteenth-Century Literature focuses especially on formal intervention--on the uses of literary patterns for intensified, exploratory engagement with unattained possibility--resulting from literary intersections with addiction discourse. Early chapters consider how Romantics such as Thomas De Quincey created, with regard to drug habit, an idea of habitual craving that related to self-experimenting science and literary exploration; later chapters look at Victorians who drew from similar understandings while devising narratives of repetitive investigation. The authors considered include De Quincey, Percy Shelley, Alfred Tennyson, Christina Rossetti, Charles Dickens, Robert Louis Stevenson, and Marie Corelli. -- Back cover Front Matter ....Pages i-vii Introduction (Adam Colman)....Pages 1-51 Shelley, Alcohol, and the “world we make”: Habit’s Patterns in The Cenci (Adam Colman)....Pages 53-79 The Labyrinths of De Quincey’s Confessions of an English Opium-Eater (Adam Colman)....Pages 81-107 From Lotos-Eaters to Lotus-Eaters: Tennyson’s And Rossetti’s Mediated Addiction (Adam Colman)....Pages 109-140 Bleak House’s Addictive Detective-Work (Adam Colman)....Pages 141-162 Optative Movement and Drink in Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (Adam Colman)....Pages 163-186 Epilogue: Generic Variety in Marie Corelli’s Wormwood and Beyond (Adam Colman)....Pages 187-205 Back Matter ....Pages 207-209