The Subject of Madness: Insanity, Individuals and Society in Late-Medieval English Literature.

Author/Editor
Harper, Stephen.

Title
The Subject of Madness: Insanity, Individuals and Society in Late-Medieval English Literature.

Published
Ph.D. Dissertation. University of Glasgow, 1997. Open access at https://theses.gla.ac.uk/3152/1/1997HarperPhD.pdf (accessed January 30, 2023).

Review
From Harper's abstract: [In my introduction I argue that] "the widespread interpretation of madness as a spiritual metaphor has only a limited application to late-medieval literature and that there is a need to consider the secular as well as the religious import of madness." He then addresses "the meaning of madness in romance . . . . as a sort of social alienation . . . related to the increasingly positive perceptions of the Wild Man." Chapter three "discusses the dream vision of Book I of the Vox Clamantis ["Visio Anglie"]; it shows how Gower repeats the commonplaces of medieval didactic writers, regarding the peasant insurrection of 1381 as an outbreak of demonic derangement. It is seen that Gower makes use of the 'organic analogy' of society to show this madness as an infection of the entire social body. The sufferings of the nobility at the hands of the rioting mobs are described sympathetically in terms of 'grief-madness'. Thus Gower presents two very different, class-based, attitudes towards insanity." Chapter four "continues the investigation of the link between madness and social class" in Chaucer's "Miller's Tale" and "Summoner's Tale"; Chapter five argues that "the apparently insane narrator of Hoccleve's major poems stresses that insanity is a hidden and undetectable affliction," while Harper's "final chapter explores the association of madness, female unruliness and mystical rapture in The Book of Margery Kempe," concluding that the Book "contains a craftily double-edged attempt by Kempe to vindicate her conduct."

Date
1997

Gower Subjects
Vox Clamantis