Les asiles au XIXe siècle

Insanity and the Lunatic Asylum in the Nineteenth Century

edited by Thomas Knowles and Serena Trowbridge

Pickering & Chatto; 

HB ISBN: 9781848934528, 

December 2014, 

256 pages, 

£60/$99; eBook: £24 (incl. VAT)

The idea of the asylum as a threat became fixed in the Victorian age. However, while patients endured terrible abuses at the hands of those working there it was also the site of advancements in medical treatment and care. Looking at asylums of the United Kingdom, Ireland, France and the United States, contributors to this collection present essays from the perspective of those who were sent there and of the place itself – its architecture, funding and purpose. Both fictional and historical sources are used to present a picture of the asylum both as it was and as it was perceived in the popular imagination.

Contents:

Introduction – Serena Trowbridge and Thomas Knowles

Part I: Literary

1 ‘Horrible Dens of Deception’: Thomas Bakewell, Thomas Mulock and Anti-Asylum Sentiments, c.1815–58 – Rebecca Wynter

2 ‘This Most Noble of Disorders’: Matilda Betham on the Reformation of the Madhouse – Elaine Bailey

3 The Legacy of Victorian Asylums in the Landscape of Contemporary British Literature – Thomas Knowles

Part II: Quantitative

4 Building a Lunatic Asylum: ‘A Question of Beer, Milk and the Irish’ – Bernard Melling

5 ‘Just Can’t Work Them Hard Enough’: A Historical Bioarcheological Study of the Inmate Experience at the Oneida County Asylum – Shawn Phillips

6 ‘Always Remember that you are in your Senses’: From Keeper to Attendant to Nurse – Claire Chatterton

7 ‘Atrophied’, ‘Engorged’, ‘Debauched’: Muscle Wastage, Degenerate Mass and Moral Worth in the General Paralytic Patient – Jennifer Wallis

Part III: Cultural

8 ‘Attitudes Passionelles’: The Pornographic Spaces of the Salpêtriére – Amanda Finelli

9 ‘The Poison that Upsets my Reason’: Men, Madness and Drunkenness in the Victorian Period – Kostas Makras

10 ‘Madness and masculinity’: Male Patients in London Asylums and Victorian Culture – Helen Goodman

11 ‘Straitjacket’: A Confined History – Will Wiles

To read the introduction, click here.

To view the index, click here.