FREN 4780

Madness Narratives

Course Description

Course information provided by the Courses of Study 2017-2018.

This seminar aims at studying the relationship between madness, alienation, creativity, and emancipation, by analyzing autobiographical narratives coming from both madmen and madwomen as well as writers. Originally used as study cases by psychiatrists during the second half of the nineteenth century, the status of testimonies on madness gradually changed until eventually they where recognized, notably by the surrealists, as literary works. At the same time, the success of many writers like Nerval, Maupassant, Proust, Gide, ad Leduc, among others, began to legitimize first person narratives that blurred the boundaries between fiction and autobiography, narrator and author, madness and creativity. Finally, in the twentieth century, in the wake of antipsychiatry, for many patients and survivors, these accounts of their own experience of madness became acts of resistance, a way to achieve their own recovery and emancipatory journey. In order to analyze these phenomena, this seminar will scrutinize different sources including, in addition to literary works, both movies and visual art productions.

When Offered Spring.

Distribution Category (LA-AS)
Language Requirement Satisfies Option 1.

Comments Conducted in French.

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