19th century
A01=Benjamin Reiss
american culture
Author_Benjamin Reiss
blackface
captivity
Category=ATD
Category=MBPK
Category=NHTB
contradiction
criticism
cultural studies
democracy
doctors
edgar allan poe
eq_art-fashion-photography
eq_bestseller
eq_history
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
freedom
gender
insane asylums
insanity
literary representations
literature
medical enslavement
mental illness
mentally ill
minstrel shows
minstrelsy
modernity
new york state
patients
psychiatric hospital
race
racism
ralph waldo emerson
social aspects
united states of america
william shakespeare
Product details
- ISBN 9780226709642
- Weight: 397g
- Dimensions: 17 x 23mm
- Publication Date: 01 Jul 2008
- Publisher: The University of Chicago Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
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In the mid-1800s a utopian movement to rehabilitate the insane resulted in a wave of publicly funded asylums - many of which became unexpected centers of cultural activity. Housed in magnificent structures with lush grounds, patients participated in theatrical programs, debating societies, literary journals, schools, and religious services. "Theaters of Madness" explores both the culture these rich offerings fomented and the asylum's place in the fabric of nineteenth-century life, reanimating a time when the treatment of the insane was a central topic in debates over democracy, freedom, and modernity.Benjamin Reiss explores the creative lives of patients and the cultural demands of their doctors. Their frequently clashing views turned practically all of American culture - from blackface minstrel shows to the works of William Shakespeare - into a battlefield in the war on insanity. Reiss also shows how asylums touched the lives and shaped the writing of key figures, such as Emerson and Poe, who viewed the system alternately as the fulfillment of a democratic ideal and as a kind of medical enslavement.
Without neglecting this troubling contradiction, "Theaters of Madness" prompts us to reflect on what our society can learn from a generation that urgently and creatively tried to solve the problem of mental illness.
Benjamin Reiss is associate professor of English at Emory University and the author of The Showman and the Slave: Race, Death, and Memory in Barnum's America.
