The Literature of Melancholia : Early Modern to Postmodern

This collection analyzes philosophical, psycho-analytic and aesthetic contexts of the discourse of melancholia in British and postcolonial literature and culture and seeks to trace the multi-faceted phenomenon of melancholia from the early modern period to the present. Texts discussed range from Shakespeare and Milton to Coetzee and Barker. This collection sets out to analyze philosophical, psychoanalytic, and aesthetic contexts of the discourse of melancholia in British and postcolonial literature and culture. It seeks to trace the multi-facetted phenomenon of melancholia from the early modern period to the present. The collection also takes into account relevant recent concepts of melancholia in the fields of gender theory, postcolonial theory, animal studies. Authors discussed in detail by a team of leading international scholars including Juliana Schiesari, Andrew Gibson, and Paul Gilroy range from Shakespeare, Sidney, Spenser, and Milton, Margaret Cavendish and Anne Bradstreet, to 18th and 19th century representatives like Mary Leapor, Thomas Carlyle, Robert Louis Stevenson and Joseph Conrad, to recent examples of postmodernist fiction and drama such as J.M. Coetzee and Howard Barker Front Matter....Pages i-xiii Melancholia as a Sense of Loss: An Introduction....Pages 1-19 Front Matter....Pages 21-21 Yet Once More: Melancholia and Amnesia in Milton’s Lycidas....Pages 23-34 Male Pregnancies, Virgin Births, Monsters of the Mind: Early Modern Melancholia and (Cross-)Gendered Constructions of Creativity....Pages 35-49 Mourning and Melancholia in England and Its Transatlantic Colonies: Examples of Seventeenth-Century Female Appropriations....Pages 50-66 ‘To pictur’d Regions and imagin’d Worlds’: Female Melancholic Writing and the Poems of Mary Leapor....Pages 67-83 Front Matter....Pages 85-85 ‘The dark bottomless Abyss, that lies under our feet, had yawned open’: The Recision of the Male Melancholic Genius in Carlyle’s Sartor Resartus....Pages 87-100 ‘They Came, They Cut Away My Tallest Pines’: Tennyson and the Melancholy of Modernity....Pages 101-115 The Melancholy of History: The French Revolution and European Historiography....Pages 116-129 Commercializing Melancholy: The National Trust....Pages 130-144 Front Matter....Pages 145-145 Melancholia in the South Pacific: The Strange Case of Robert Louis Stevenson’s Travel Writing....Pages 147-159 The Secret of the Father in the Colonial Secret: Rosa Praed’s ‘Weird Melancholy’....Pages 160-172 Modernist Melancholia and Time: The Synchronicity of the Non-Synchronic in Freud, Tylor and Conrad....Pages 173-186 The Closed Circle of Britain’s Postcolonial Melancholia....Pages 187-204 Front Matter....Pages 205-205 Working at the Seams: Howard Barker’s Tragic Trauerspiel....Pages 207-222 Melancholia and Mourning Animals....Pages 223-239 Melancholic Consolation? J. M. Coetzee, Irony and the Aesthetics of the Sublime....Pages 240-253 The Novel after Melancholia: On Tom McCarthy’s Remainder and David Mitchell’s Ghostwritten....Pages 254-267 Back Matter....Pages 268-271 Melancholia as a sense of loss : an introduction / Martin Middeke and Christina Wald -- Yet once more : melancholia and amnesia in Milton's Lycidas / Tobias Döring -- Male pregnancies, virgin births, monsters of the mind : early modern melancholia and (cross- )gendered constructions of creativity / Anne-Julia Zwierlein -- Mourning and melancholia in England and its transatlantic colonies : examples of seventeenth-century female appropriations / Gabriele Rippl -- "To pictur'd regions and imagin'd worlds" : female melancholic writing and the poems of Mary Leapor / Sabine Blackmore -- "The dark bottomless abyss, that lies under our feet, had yawned open" : the rescission of the male melancholic genius in Carlyle's Sartor Resartus / Felix Sprang -- "They came, they cut away my tallest pines" : Tennyson and the melancholy of modernity / Andrew Gibson -- The melancholy of history : the French Revolution and European historiography / Peter Fritzsche -- Commercialising melancholy : the National Trust / Christoph Ehland and Stephan Kohl -- Melancholia in the South Pacific : the strange case of Robert Louis Stevenson's travel writing / Kirsten Sandrock -- The secret of the father in the colonial secret : Rosa Praed's Weird Melancholy / Jennifer Rutherford -- Modernist melancholia and time : the synchronicity of the non-synchronic in Freud, Tylor and Conrad / Anne Enderwitz -- The closed circle of Britain's postcolonial melancholia / Paul Gilroy -- Working at the seams : Howard Barker's Tragic Trauerspiel / Elizabeth Sakellaridou -- Melancholia and mourning animals / Juliana Schiesari -- Melancholic consolation? : J.M. Coetzee, irony, and the aesthetics of the sublime / Johan Geertsema -- The novel after melancholia : on Tom McCarthy's Remainder and David Mitchell's Ghostwritten / Pieter Vermeulen "This book is an ambitious engagement with a major topic of psychological and cultural importance. Its aims are wide-ranging, covering key writers and topics between the early modern period and our own time. Using often sophisticated theoretical approaches, the contributors have important arguments to make both in terms of the historical analysis of melancholia and of melancholic texts and tendencies, and of the continuity between historical figures and objects and such present day preoccupations as depression, loss and nostalgia. The result is a rich mix of approaches and a convincingly nuanced series of distinctions in our experience and understanding of the merry and the melancholic."--Allan Ingram, Professor of English, University of Northumbria, UK v. 1. Europe, Afrique et Asie v. 2. Pacifique Sud-Ouest, Amérique et Antarctique.