Love's Madness is an important new contribution to the interdisciplinary study of insanity. Focusing on the figure of the love-mad woman, it presents a significant reassessment of the ways in which British medical writers and novelists of the nineteenth century thought about madness, femininity, and narrative convention. The book centers around studies of novels by Jane Austen, Sir Walter Scott, Charlotte Bront , Wilkie Collins, and Charles Dickens, as well as of previously neglected writings by Charles Maturin, Lady Caroline Lamb, and Edward Bulwer-Lytton, among others.

The only English translation of “a masterpiece” (The Nation)—a stunning trilogy of novellas about the soul-crushing cost of life under a violent Haitian dictatorship, featuring an introduction by Edwidge Danticat Originally published in 1968, Love, Anger, Madness virtually disappeared from circulation until its republication in France in 2005. Set in the barely fictionalized Haiti of “Papa Doc” Duvalier’s repressive rule, Marie Vieux-Chauvet’s writing was so powerful and so incendiary that she was forced to flee to the United States. Yet Love, Anger, Madness endures. Claire, the narrator of Love, is the eldest of three daughters who surrenders her dreams of marriage to run the household after her parents die. Insecure about her dark skin, she fantasizes about her middle sister’s French husband, while he has an affair with the youngest sister, setting in motion a complicated family dynamic that echoes the growing chaos outside their home. In Anger, the police terrorize a middle-class family by threatening to seize their land. The father insinuates that their only hope of salvation lies with an unspeakable act—his daughter Rose must prostitute herself—which leads to all-consuming guilt, shame, and rage. And finally, Madness paints a terrifying portrait of a Haitian village that has been ravaged by militants. René, a young poet, is trapped in his family’s house for days with no food and becomes obsessed with the souls of the dead that surround him.

How do Spanish writers of the 19th and 20th century define and represent madness, a basic and controversial aspect of world culture, and how do the different conceptions of madness intersect with love, religion, politics, and other literary themes in Spanish society? This multi-author book analyzes the theme of madness in formative masterpieces of Spanish literature of the 19th and 20th century through the use of relevant critical and theoretical approaches. In this context, authors studied in this book include Juan Valera, Leopoldo Alas Clarín, Emilia Pardo Bazán, Caterina Albert, Benito Pérez Galdós, Miguel de Unamuno, and Juan Goytisolo, among others.

A free verse biography of Mary Shelley, the author of Frankenstein, featuring over 300 pages of black-and-white watercolor illustrations.

This is one of the wisest books I've read in years... —New York Times Book Review No writer I know of comes close to even trying to articulate the weird magic of poetry as Ruefle does. She acknowledges and celebrates in the odd mystery and mysticism of the act—the fact that poetry must both guard and reveal, hint at and pull back... Also, and maybe most crucially, Ruefle’s work is never once stuffy or overdone: she writes this stuff with a level of seriousness-as-play that’s vital and welcome, that doesn’t make writing poetry sound anything but wild, strange, life-enlargening fun. -The Kenyon Review Profound, unpredictable, charming, and outright funny...These informal talks have far more staying power and verve than most of their kind. Readers may come away dazzled, as well as amused... —Publishers Weekly This is a book not just for poets but for anyone interested in the human heart, the inner-life, the breath exhaling a completion of an idea that will make you feel changed in some way. This is a desert island book. —Matthew Dickman The accomplished poet is humorous and self-deprecating in this collection of illuminating essays on poetry, aesthetics and literature... —San Francisco Examiner Over the course of fifteen years, Mary Ruefle delivered a lecture every six months to a group of poetry graduate students. Collected here for the first time, these lectures include "Poetry and the Moon," "Someone Reading a Book Is a Sign of Order in the World," and "Lectures I Will Never Give." Intellectually virtuosic, instructive, and experiential, Madness, Rack, and Honey resists definition, demanding instead an utter—and utterly pleasurable—immersion. Finalist for the 2012 National Book Critics Circle Award. Mary Ruefle has published more than a dozen books of poetry, prose, and erasures. She lives in Vermont.

'Divine Madness: Archetypes of Romantic Love' examines the transforming experience of romantic love in literature, myth, religion, and everyday life. A series of psychological meditations on the nature of romantic love and human relationship, Divine Madness takes the perspective that human love is a species of divine love and that our experience of romantic love both conceals and reveals the ultimate Lover and Beloved. John Haule draws on depth psychology, the mystical traditions of the world, and literature from Virgil to Milan Kundera to lead the reader inside the mind and heart of the lover. Each chapter explores a characteristic aspect of relationship, such as seduction and love play, the rapture of union, the agony of separation, madness, woundedness, and transcendence. Focusing on the soulful and spiritual meaning of these experiences, Divine Madness sheds light on our elations, obsessions, and broken hearts, but it also reconnects us with the wisdom of time immemorial. As a practicing Jungian analyst and former professor of religious studies, John Haule masterfully guides his readers through the labyrinth of everyday experience, and the often hidden layers of archetypal realities, sketching a philosophy of romantic love through the stories of the world's literature and mythology.

Against a backdrop of contemporary social and sexual concerns, and potent fears surrounding the moral and physical 'degeneration' of late nineteenth and early twentieth-century society,'The Cruel Madness of Love' explores a critical period in the developing relationship between syphilis and insanity. General paralysis of the insane (GPI), the most commonly diagnosed of the neurosyphilitic disorders, has been devastating both in terms of its severity and incidence. Using the rich laboratory and asylum records of lowland Scotland as a case study, Gayle Davis examines the evolution of GPI as a disease category from a variety of perspectives: social, medical, and pathological. Through exploring case notes and the impact of new diagnostic techniques and therapies, such as the Wassermann Test and Malarial Therapy, the reader gains a unique insight into both patients and practitioners. Significant insights are gained into the socio–sexual background and medical experience of patients, as well as the clinical ideas and judgmental behaviour of the practitioners confronting this disease.'The Cruel Madness of Love' will be of interest to anyone wishing to explore the historical relationship between sexuality, morality and disease.