The Literature of Melancholia - by M Middeke (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

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.

Review Quotes

'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

About the Author

SABINE BLACKMORE Humboldt-Universität, Germany TOBIAS DÖRING Professor of English Literature, LMU Munich, Germany CHRISTOPH EHLAND, Professor of English Literature and Cultural Studies, University of Paderborn, Germany ANNE ENDERWITZ Post-Doctoral Fellow, Friedrich Schlegel Graduate School for Literary Studies, Freie Universität Berlin, Germany PETER FRITZSCHE Professor of History at the University of Illinois, USA JOHAN GEERTSEMA National University of Singapore ANDREW GIBSON Research Professor of Modern Literature and Theory, Royal Holloway, University of London, UK PAUL GILROY Anthony Giddens Professor in Social Theory, London School of Economics and Political Sciences, UK STEPHAN KOHL Professor Emeritus of English Cultures and Literature, University of Würzburg, Germany GABRIELE RIPPL Professor of Literatures in English, University of Berne, Switzerland JENNIFER RUTHERFORD Associate Professor in Sociology, University of Flinder, Austria ELIZABETH SAKELLARIDOU Professor of Drama and Theatre Studies, Aristotle University, Thessaloniki, Greece KIRSTEN SANDROCK Assistant Professor at the Department of English Literature and Cultural Studies, University of Göttingen, Germany JULIANA SCHIESARI Professor of Italian and Comparative Literature, University of California, Davis, USA FELIX C. H. SPRANG Assistant Professor of English Literature, University of Hamburg, Germany PIETER VERMEULEN Postdoctoral Research Fellow with the Flemish Research Council(FWO), University of Ghent, Belgium ANNE-JULIA ZWIERLEIN Professor of English Literary and Cultural Studies, University of Germany