Most of us have, at one time, been obsessed with something, but how did obsession become a mental illness? This book examines literary, medical, and philosophical texts to argue that what we call obsession became a disease in the Romantic era and reflects the era's anxieties. Using a number of literary texts, some well-known (like Mary Shelley's 1818 Frankenstein and Edgar Allan Poe's 1843 The Tell Tale Heart) and some not (like Charlotte Dacre's 1811 The Passions and Charles Brockden Brown's 1787 Edgar Huntly), the book looks at vigilia, an overly intense curiosity, intellectual monomania, an obsession with study, nymphomania and erotomania, gendered forms of desire, revolutiana, an obsession with sublime violence and military service, and ideality, an obsession with an idea. The coda argues that traces of these Romantic constructs can be seen in popular accounts of obsession today.

Constitutes the first book-length examination of the Romantic interest in obsessive thinking Examines a wide variety of Romantic writers, from Mary Shelley to John Keats Enlists a transatlantic, interdisciplinary range of Romantic-era texts - philosophical, medical, and literary - to argue that all of these discussions of obsession were influenced by the aesthetic discourse of the sublime

Autorentext

Kathleen Béres Rogers is an Associate Professor of English at the College of Charleston, South Carolina, USA.

Inhalt

1. Introduction: Scorpions in the Mind.- 2. Vigilia and the Science of the Mind in William Godwin's Caleb Williams and Charles Brockden Brown's Edgar Huntly, or Memories of a Sleepwalker .- 3. Intellectual Monomania and Enthusiasm in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and Mary Hays's Memoirs of Emma Courtney .- 4. The Stings of Love: Erotomania and Nymphomania in John Keats's Isabella, or The Pot of Basil and Charlotte Dacre's The Passions .- 5. Revolutiana and the Sublime in George Gleig's Subaltern , Lord Byron's Siege of Corinth , and Joanna Baillie's Count Basil .- 6. Ideality and Art in Samuel Taylor Coleridge's "Rime of the Ancient Mariner" and Edgar Allen Poe's "Berenice" and "The Tell-Tale Heart".- 7. Coda: From Scorpions to Spiders, A.S. Byatt's Possession .