Teaching Responsibility
LJMU Schools involved in Delivery:
Humanities and Social Science
Learning Methods
Lecture
Seminar
Workshop
Module Offerings
6126ENGL-SEP-MTP
Aims
1. To examine the representation of the mind and mental states in a range of literary texts, with particular attention to representations of madness and other extreme or unusual states of mind.
2. To introduce students to the interdisciplinary study of literature alongside psy-sciences, including psychoanalytic literary criticism and theory, the history of psychiatry and its institutions, contemporary medical-model psychology, and the field of cognitive literary studies.
3. To understand and question accepted discourses and modes of representing madness and the mind in contemporary culture, with an understanding of the challenges that have been offered to scientific and medical authority over the mind.
Learning Outcomes
1.
Demonstrate an understanding of the variety of ways in which the human mind has been represented in literary texts, and compare and distinguish representations across different historical periods and from different cultural and intellectual contexts.
2.
Appraise the major intellectual and theoretical traditions which have sought to investigate structural parallels between language and literature and the 'normal' and the pathological mind.
3.
Critique the status, use, and function of terms such as 'madness' and diagnostic labels from medical science, especially in relation to debates about mental health and disability in contemporary culture.
Module Content
Outline Syllabus:
ndicative primary texts: Foucault, History of Madness; psychoanalytic case histories by Freud and Jung; Charlotte Perkins Gilman, ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’; Woolf, Mrs Dalloway; The Cabinet of Dr Caligari and writing on film by Siegfried Kracauer; Beckett, Murphy;Gogol, ‘The Diary of a Madman’; Peter Shaffer, Equus; Ken Kesey, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1962) Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar and Ariel; Mad Pride anthology and psychiatric survivor writing; Sebastian Faulks, Human Traces (2005); writing on cognitive science by Oliver Sacks and others. Indicative secondary reading: Foucault; psychoanalytic literary criticism and theory; cultural history of psychiatry by Elaine Showalter, Andrew Scull, Roy Porter, Mark Micale, Michael Staub, Louis Sass, and others; work in cognitive literary studies by Mary Crane, Terence Cave, Lisa Zunshine, Monika Fludernik, Paul B. Armstrong, and others.
ndicative primary texts: Foucault, History of Madness; psychoanalytic case histories by Freud and Jung; Charlotte Perkins Gilman, ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’; Woolf, Mrs Dalloway; The Cabinet of Dr Caligari and writing on film by Siegfried Kracauer; Beckett, Murphy;Gogol, ‘The Diary of a Madman’; Peter Shaffer, Equus; Ken Kesey, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1962) Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar and Ariel; Mad Pride anthology and psychiatric survivor writing; Sebastian Faulks, Human Traces (2005); writing on cognitive science by Oliver Sacks and others. Indicative secondary reading: Foucault; psychoanalytic literary criticism and theory; cultural history of psychiatry by Elaine Showalter, Andrew Scull, Roy Porter, Mark Micale, Michael Staub, Louis Sass, and others; work in cognitive literary studies by Mary Crane, Terence Cave, Lisa Zunshine, Monika Fludernik, Paul B. Armstrong, and others.
Module Overview:
This module examines the representation of the mind and mental states in a range of literary texts, with particular attention to representations of madness and other extreme or unusual states of mind. It introduces you to the interdisciplinary study of literature alongside psy-sciences, including psychoanalytic literary criticism and theory, the history of psychiatry and its institutions, contemporary medical-model psychology, and the field of cognitive literary studies. It will help to understand and question accepted discourses and modes of representing madness and the mind in contemporary culture, with an understanding of the challenges that have been offered to scientific and medical authority over the mind.
This module examines the representation of the mind and mental states in a range of literary texts, with particular attention to representations of madness and other extreme or unusual states of mind. It introduces you to the interdisciplinary study of literature alongside psy-sciences, including psychoanalytic literary criticism and theory, the history of psychiatry and its institutions, contemporary medical-model psychology, and the field of cognitive literary studies. It will help to understand and question accepted discourses and modes of representing madness and the mind in contemporary culture, with an understanding of the challenges that have been offered to scientific and medical authority over the mind.
Additional Information:
This module incorporates material from the module formerly validated as 6107ENGL Locating Madness.
This module incorporates material from the module formerly validated as 6107ENGL Locating Madness.