About the Author

Carol Thomas Neely is Professor of English and Women's Studies, University of Illinois at Urbana'Champaign. She is the author of Broken Nuptials in Shakespeare's Plays and coeditor of The Woman's Part: Feminist Criticism of Shakespeare.

Reviews

"'Distraction' is both subject and method for Carol Thomas Neely's varied, readable, and refreshing study of that diffuse term 'madness' on the early modern stage... A short epilogue on recent images and representations of madness continues Neely's careful, understated negotiation of historicism and presentism, stressing similarities as well as differences between modern and early modern perceptions."-Emma Smith, Times Literary Supplement, August 20, 2004 "No one working in early modern English studies today knows more about madness and the representations of madness than Carol Thomas Neely, and no one can hold a candle to her when it comes to acute readings of the plays in which the mad or those accused of madness or possession appear. Distracted Subjects contains some of the best readings of canonical Shakespeare plays that I have read in years. This is a major book, one that will become required reading for scholars and students, both advanced and undergraduate."-Gail Kern Paster, Director of the Folger Shakespeare Library "Despite two decades of historical scholarship challenging and modifying the conclusions of Michel Foucault's famous Madness and Civilization, surprisingly little of that work has focused on the English Renaissance, and there has been no adequate treatment of madness in the great literature of the era. Carol Neely's book does far more than fill in the blankest spots in our mental map: it combines the methods and sources of literary and social history to produce what is easily the best cultural history of the topic ever published. Neely's close readings of playwrights' representations of madness offer new insights into some of the greatest dramas of the age. Distracted Subjects makes a major advance in both our understanding of the history of insanity and also the theories and methodologies we use to study it. It is a book that should be read by everyone interested in the literature and culture of early modern England."-Michael MacDonald, Professor of History, University of Michigan "Distracted Subjects makes the discourses, therapies, and dramatic representations of madness central to the interpretation of early modern subjects. Carol Thomas Neely's broad research and alert critical eye discover in conceptions of 'distraction' a subtle, complex fluidity and a humane sympathy."-Coppelia Kahn, Professor of English and Gender Studies, Brown University "In this interesting, well-written, and readable book, Carol Thomas Neely analyzes the mobility of discourses of madness in late sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century England. Throughout the book she provides fascinating discriminations among types of madness, explaining historically the changing cultural investments in melancholia, lovesickness, madness as heroic passion, distraction, and insanity. A pleasure to read, this book makes a very important contribution to studies of Renaissance drama, to cultural studies, and to gender studies."-Mary Beth Rose, Professor, Department of English, and Director of the Institute for Humanities, University of Illinois, Chicago