The Madhouse of Language

Download or read book The Madhouse of Language written by Allan Ingram and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-01-11 with total page 212 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Language has always been used as a measure of social, ideological, and psychological contexts for the exploration of madness. The Madhouse of Language considers the relations between madness and language from the late seventeenth to early nineteenth centuries, focusing on the close analysis of both medical records and texts by mad writers. It presents a highly original account of the linguistic relations between madness and sanity, of the appropriation by sane writers of the forms of English, and of attempts by mad patients to gain access to the expressive potential of language.