Research Catalog

Title

Affective disorder and the writing life : the melancholic muse / edited by Stephanie Stone Horton.

Publication

Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire ; New York, NY : Palgrave Pivot, 2014.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Additional Authors

Stone Horton, Stephanie

Description

xiv, 145 pages; 23 cm.

Summary

How does affective madness influence the social understanding of writers and other artists, or shape the creative act itself? In a 15-year longitudinal study at the Iowa Writers' Workshop, a study little known outside of psychiatry, 80 per cent of the writers reported either living with, or having had a lifetime incidence of, an affective disorder (depression or manic depression), as opposed to only 30 per cent of non-writer controls. "Affective Disorder and the Writing Life" interrogates the age-old mythos of the 'mad writer' through lived experience, literary analysis, writerly reflection, and contemporary neuroscience. These essays explore how affective disorders colour, drive and sometimes silence the writing mind -- and how affective difference has always informed the literary imagination.

Series Statement

Palgrave pivot

Uniform Title

Palgrave pivot.

Subjects

• Authors > Mental health
• Authors > Psychology
• Affective disorders

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references and index.

Additional Formats (note)

• Also issued online.

Contents

PART I: "COULD IT BE MADNESS, THIS?" AFFECTIVE DIFFERENCE AND THE WORK OF COMPOSITION -- 1. 'What Ceremony of Words Can Patch the Havoc?': Composition and madness / Stephanie Stone Horton -- 2. Muse Afire: Negotiating the Line Between Creative Pursuit and Mental Illness / Nancer Ballard -- 3. After the Fire Goes Out: Writing Before and After Treatment for Affective Disorder / Lise Bagoley -- 4. Gaps on the Vita / Sharon O'Brien -- 5. Lunatic / Jeannie Parker Beard -- PART II: "THEIR LIVES A STORM WHEREON THEY RIDE": AFFECTIVE (DIS)ORDER AND THE LITERARY IMAGINATION -- 6. Axing the Frozen Sea: Female Inscriptions of Madness / Joann K. Deiudicibus -- 7. The Things We Carry: Embodied Truth and Tim O' Brien's Poetics of Despair / David Bahr -- 8. 'The Incessant Rise and Fall and Fall and Rise': Virginia Woolf's Treading the Waves / Jessica De Santa -- 9. The Fire, the Dark, and the Beautiful Distance / Stephen Newton.

Call Number

JFD 14-1622

ISBN

• 1137381655 (hbk.)
• 9781137381651 (hbk.)

OCLC

861478462

Title

Affective disorder and the writing life : the melancholic muse / edited by Stephanie Stone Horton.

Publisher

Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire ; New York, NY : Palgrave Pivot, 2014.

Type of Content

text

Type of Medium

unmediated

Type of Carrier

volume

Series

Palgrave pivot

Palgrave pivot.

Bibliography

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Additional Formats

Also issued online.

Added Author

Stone Horton, Stephanie, editor.

Research Call Number

JFD 14-1622