Table of Contents

Introduction; 1. Naming a disease; 2. What's wrong with me?; 3. Melancholy men, depressed women?; 4. The Western malady; 5. The telescope of truth; Conclusion.

Promotional Information

A history of melancholy and its significance in Western history and culture.

About the Author

Matthew Bell is Professor of German and Comparative Literature at King's College London. His main areas of research are eighteenth-century literature and thought, and the history of the human sciences. He is the author of The German Tradition of Psychology in Literature and Thought, 1700–1840 (Cambridge, 2005).

Reviews

'Matthew Bell's knowledge of Western historical and cultural traditions is far-reaching, deep, and employed to great advantage in this compelling book. His account of the place of melancholy within these traditions, and its links to self-consciousness, are original and provocative, making Melancholia: The Western Malady a worthy successor and complement to earlier writing such as Jackson's great Melancholia and Depression.' Jennifer H. Radden, Professor Emerita, University of Massachusetts, Boston

'Matthew Bell has written an important depth-historical and interdisciplinary study linking melancholia and depressive disorders in the West to a distinctive culture of self-consciousness. A book like this comes once in a generation to challenge established paradigms and to engage scholars in the humanities, social sciences and psychiatry about the distinctive history and nature of melancholia as a uniquely Western malady.' Julius H. Rubin, Professor Emeritus, University of Saint Joseph and author of Religious Melancholy and Protestant Experience in America (1994) and Tears of Repentance, Christian Indian Identity and Community in Colonial Southern New England (2013)