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This book explores the ways which people navigated the emotions provoked by the mad in Britain across the long eighteenth century. Building upon recent advances in the historical study of emotions, it plots the evolution of attitudes towards insanity, and considers how shifting emotional norms influenced the development of a 'humanitarian' temperament, which drove the earliest movements for psychiatric reform in England and Scotland. Reacting to a 'culture of sensibility', which encouraged tears at the sight of tender suffering, early asylum reformers chose instead to express their humanity through unflinching resolve, charging into madhouses to contemplate scenes of misery usually hidden from public view, and confronting the authorities that enabled neglect to flourish. This intervention required careful emotional management, which is documented comprehensively here for the first time. Drawing upon a wide array of medical and literary sources, this book provides invaluable insightsinto pre-modern attitudes towards insanity.
List of contents
1. Introduction.- Part 1: Insanity and the Sentimental Emotional Regime, c. 1770-1800.- 2. 'A Sight for Pity to Peruse': The Spectacle of Madness in the Culture of Sensibility.- 3. Inviolable Beauty: The Madwoman in the Sentimental Age.- Part 2: Lunacy Reform and the 'Romantic' Emotional Regime, c. 1790-1820.- 4. A 'Forcible Appeal to Humanity': Sympathising with the Insane in the Romantic Age.- 5. Spectacles 'Too Shocking for Description': Sensationalism and the Politics of Lunacy Reform in Early-Nineteenth-Century Britain.- 6. 'Noble Feelings and Manly Spirit': Indignation, Public Spirit and the Makings of an Asylum Revolution.- 7. Conclusion: An 'Active Spirit of Humanity'? Emotions and the History of Asylum Reform.
About the author
Mark Neuendorf is Visiting Research Fellow in the Department of History at the University of Adelaide, Australia. His research examines the emotions and print cultures of British psychiatry, with a particular focus on the emergence of organised psychiatric reform.
