deadline for submissions: January 15, 2023 full name / name of organization: Catharine Maria Sedgwick Society contact email: akreed@vt.edu The Catharine Maria Sedgwick Society solicits proposals for two panels to be presented at the 2023 American Literature Association Conference. The conference will take place May 25-28 at the Westin Copley Place in Boston, Massachusetts. The…
Today, words like ‘frantic’ and ‘frenzy’ are the stuff of hyperbolic newspaper headlines. Five hundred years ago, they described someone who was judged to be suffering from an episode of severe mental illness. Among frenzy’s hallmark symptoms were sudden, uncharacteristic changes in mood and behaviour; ‘those that be frantic… rage furiously, so that they cannot…
This paper uses a collection of highly unusual letters from the Elizabethan State Papers, whose authors are described as ‘crazy’, ‘distracted’, and ‘insane’, to explore the epistolary construction and expression of mental and emotional distress in late-sixteenth-century England. It begins by reflecting briefly on the tricky methodological problems inherent in such an enterprise: the uncertain…
