Diagnosing Literary Genius: A Cultural History of Psychiatry in Russia, 1880-1930, and: Posmertnaia diagnostika genialnosti: Eduard Bagritskii, Andrei Belyi, Vladimir Maiakovskii v kollektsii Instituta mozga: Materialy iz arkhiva G. I. Poliakova

Specialists in the new sciences of the mind focused much of their attention in the late 19th and early 20th centuries on classifying mental abnormalities. This was an international endeavor, everywhere tinged by politics and culture, and, as a growing body of fascinating literature demonstrates, Russians were energetic participants. In some respects the efforts of Russian psychiatrists, neuropathologists, and psychologists paralleled those of their counterparts in other societies; in Russia during that era of revolutionary ferment, however, literary culture, medical science, and politics interacted in particularly interesting and distinctive ways

"The pleasure of fiends": Degenerate Laughter in Stoker's Dracula

I wish to suggest that in order to study laughter in horror fiction we must move beyond the paradigm that equates laughter with comedy. As humour critic Marcel Gutwirth notes, "laughter is not all bounty: it has its dark, its killing side... violence of some degree may well be of its essence, though held in check" (8). I hope to demonstrate that the horror of what I will term "monstrous laughter" in a text like Bram Stoker's Dracula is that the violent "dark side" of laughter is very deliberately not held in check. Like a contagion, it is released indiscriminately upon the world, threatening to contaminate the hearers – and by extension the readers of the text – with the perverse perspective of the laughing villains who find humour in murder and mayhem

The new woman and the new science:feminist writing 1880-1900

Produced in collaboration with University College WorcesterAvailable from British Library Document Supply Centre-DSC:DXN048173 / BLDSC - British Library Document Supply CentreSIGLEGBUnited Kingdo

Shakespeare Among Italian Criminologists and Psychiatrists, 1870s-1920s

Italians found another way to engage with Shakespeare besides opera. In 1923, Italian intellectual Piero Gobetti wrote that his age would be remembered as a curious chapter in the reception history of Shakespeare, when the Bard got entangled with ideas of criminal anthropology. In fact, the uses of Shakespeare by Lombroso’s school are now forgotten. In the second half of the nineteenth century, Shakespeare began to be portrayed as a genius who anticipated the findings of the Italian Positivist School, or, alternatively, as an authority who could debunk them. Shakespeare’s own psyche and the characters of his plays were explored and pathologised. These studies occasionally percolated into the practices of courthouses, prisons, hospitals, and asylums, and had an impact on the performance of Shakespeare’s plays. This volume provides an edition of hitherto uncollected primary sources which document these uses of Shakespeare. Each text has a parallel English translation, and is introduced by a preface providing details about the context and its main discursive stances. The volume also features a critical introduction and explanatory notes