Distracted Subjects: Madness and Gender in Shakespeare and Early Modern Culture

Carol Thomas Neely

Published by Cornell University Press 2004

Distracted Subjects

Madness and Gender in Shakespeare and Early Modern Culture

Carol Thomas Neely

https://doi.org/10.7591/9781501729133

Overview
Contents

About this book

In the first book to provide a feminist analysis of early modern madness, Carol Thomas Neely reveals the mobility and heterogeneity of discourses of "distraction," the most common term for the condition in late-sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century...

Author / Editor information

Carol Thomas Neely is Professor of English and Women's Studies, University of Illinois at Urbana'Champaign. She is the author of Broken Nuptials in Shakespeare's Plays and coeditor of The Woman's Part: Feminist Criticism of Shakespeare.

Reviews

Gail Kern Paster, Director of the Folger Shakespeare Library:

No one working in early modern English studies today knows more about madness and the representations of madness than Carol Thomas Neely, and no one can hold a candle to her when it comes to acute readings of the plays in which the mad or those accused of madness or possession appear. Distracted Subjects contains some of the best readings of canonical Shakespeare plays that I have read in years. This is a major book, one that will become required reading for scholars and students, both advanced and undergraduate.

Mary Beth Rose, Professor, Department of English, and Director of the Institute for Humanities, University of Illinois, Chicago:

In this interesting, well-written, and readable book, Carol Thomas Neely analyzes the mobility of discourses of madness in late sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century England. Throughout the book she provides fascinating discriminations among types of madness, explaining historically the changing cultural investments in melancholia, lovesickness, madness as heroic passion, distraction, and insanity. A pleasure to read, this book makes a very important contribution to studies of Renaissance drama, to cultural studies, and to gender studies.

Coppélia Kahn, Professor of English and Gender Studies, Brown University:

Distracted Subjects makes the discourses, therapies, and dramatic representations of madness central to the interpretation of early modern subjects. Carol Thomas Neely's broad research and alert critical eye discover in conceptions of 'distraction' a subtle, complex fluidity and a humane sympathy.

Michael MacDonald, Professor of History, University of Michigan:

Despite two decades of historical scholarship challenging and modifying the conclusions of Michel Foucault's famous Madness and Civilization, surprisingly little of that work has focused on the English Renaissance, and there has been no adequate treatment of madness in the great literature of the era. Carol Neely's book does far more than fill in the blankest spots in our mental map: it combines the methods and sources of literary and social history to produce what is easily the best cultural history of the topic ever published. Neely's close readings of playwrights' representations of madness offer new insights into some of the greatest dramas of the age. Distracted Subjects makes a major advance in both our understanding of the history of insanity and also the theories and methodologies we use to study it. It is a book that should be read by everyone interested in the literature and culture of early modern England.

'Distraction' is both subject and method for Carol Thomas Neely's varied, readable, and refreshing study of that diffuse term 'madness' on the early modern stage.... A short epilogue on recent images and representations of madness continues Neely's careful, understated negotiation of historicism and presentism, stressing similarities as well as differences between modern and early modern perceptions.

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
CONTENTS Publicly Available Download PDF	vii
ILLUSTRATIONS Publicly Available Download PDF	ix
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Publicly Available Download PDF	xi
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE Publicly Available Download PDF	xv
INTRODUCTION: Divisions in the Discourses of Distraction Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
CHAPTER 1. Initiating Madness Onstage: Gammer Gurton's Needle and The Spanish Tragedy Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	27
CHAPTER 2. Reading the Language of Distraction: Hamlet, Macbeth, King Lear Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	46
CHAPTER 3. Diagnosing Women's Melancholy: Case Histories and the Jailer's Daughter's Cure in The Two Noble Kinsmen Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	69
CHAPTER 4· Destabilizing Lovesickness, Gender, and Sexuality:Twelfth Night and As You Like It Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	99
CHAPTER 5. Confining Madmen and Transgressing Boundaries:The Comedy of Errors, The Merry Wives of Windsor, and Twelfth Night Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	136
CHAPTER 6. Rethinking Confinement in Early Modern England: The Place of Bedlam in History and Drama Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	167
EPILOGUE: Then and Now Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	213
WORKS CITED Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	219
INDEX Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	237

(Deutsch)

Language: English
Publisher: Cornell University Press
Audience: General/trade;
Pages
- Main content: 264
Illustrations
- Other: 1 map, 16 halftones
Keywords: Literary Studies; Gender Studies

eBook

Published: August 6, 2018
ISBN: 9781501729133