Madness and the Sea
A Literary History
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Beschreibung
This book traces the origins of using sea journeys to treat mental illness, a practice recommended within the medical community through the nineteenth century. It also explores the profound consequences of such experiences on the health of writers who sought such cures as exemplified in their subsequent works. The use of sea voyages derived from the reception of Hippocratic medical treatises in the early Renaissance period that argued for the benefits of exposure to sea air and salt water for sufferers of depression and nervous disorders. Copestake traces how Western perceptions of the ocean, historically dominated by fear, were impacted by the works of writers, artists, and philosophers who took sea journeys to improve their mental health. Focusing on the Hippocratic medical discourse behind these journeys and the need for the ocean instilled by the mental health concerns of William Cowper, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Herman Melville, William James and Virgina Woolf in particular, he illustrates how the work that resulted from their respective associations of health with the ocean and bodies of water saw them each introduce individual modes of "oceanic thinking." The author also explores how these portrayals have positively impacted Western perceptions of the sea and our understanding of mental health up to the present day.
Ian Copestake received his PhD in American Literature from the University of Leeds, UK. Currently, he lives and works in Germany as an academic editor, proofreader, and translator.
This book traces the origins of using sea journeys to treat mental illness, a practice recommended within the medical community through the nineteenth century. It also explores the profound consequences of such experiences on the health of writers who sought such cures as exemplified in their subsequent works. The use of sea voyages derived from the reception of Hippocratic medical treatises in the early Renaissance period that argued for the benefits of exposure to sea air and salt water for sufferers of depression and nervous disorders. Copestake traces how Western perceptions of the ocean, historically dominated by fear, were impacted by the works of writers, artists, and philosophers who took sea journeys to improve their mental health. Focusing on the Hippocratic medical discourse behind these journeys and the need for the ocean instilled by the mental health concerns of William Cowper, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Herman Melville, William James and Virgina Woolf in particular, he illustrates how the work that resulted from their respective associations of health with the ocean and bodies of water saw them each introduce individual modes of "oceanic thinking." The author also explores how these portrayals have positively impacted Western perceptions of the sea and our understanding of mental health up to the present day.
Traces perceptions of the sea from fear to longing in literature and art from the sixteenth century to the present Charts how perceptions of the ocean changed through medically prescribed sea journeys to treat forms of mental illness Explains what lures people to the sea in search of health, and why the ocean also remains terrifying
Autor*in
Ian D. Copestake
Themen in »Madness and the Sea«
Literature, Science and Medicine Studies Literary Studies Blue Humanities Maritime Studies Medical Humanities Mental Illness