Melancholy and the Care of the Soul: Religion, Moral Philosophy and Madness in Early Modern EnglandMelancholy is rightly taken to be a central topic and concern of early modern culture, and it continues to generate scholarly interest among historians of medicine, literature, psychiatry, and religion. This book considerably furthers our understanding of the issue by examining the extensive discussions of the treatment of melancholy provided in seventeenth and eighteenth century religious and moral philosophical publications, many of which have received only scant attention from modern scholars. Arguing that melancholy was considered by many early modern writers to be as much a disease of the mind as a condition which originated in some physiological disturbance, Dr Schmidt reveals how religious consolation and spiritual confession were employed as important elements of the treatment. This underlines a common contemporary view that mental illness was regarded as in some way related to a sinful condition, rather than a guiltless medical problem.The book also explores ways in which the language used to express and treat melancholy shaped the experience of melancholy and its behavioural manifestations, suggesting that the use of religious languages to treat the condition could enable the sufferer to conceive of themselves as struggling with the kinds of moral and spiritual problems that beset their contemporaries. As a study in intellectual history, Melancholy and the Care of the Soul offers new insights into early modern texts on melancholy, including dramatic and literary representations of melancholy and melancholic suffering, and critically engages with a broad range of current scholarship dealing with early modern medical, religious and cultural issues. |
Contents
and Patristic Christianity | 19 |
Melancholy among the Passions in Seventeenthcentury Thought | 27 |
2230 | 33 |
The Pastoral Care of Melancholy in Calvinist England | 47 |
The devils bath | 64 |
Ministers madmen and women | 77 |
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Melancholy and the Care of the Soul: Religion, Moral Philosophy and Madness ... Jeremy Schmidt No preview available - 2016 |
Common terms and phrases
affliction of conscience Anatomy Anatomy of Melancholy Anglican argued Baxter bodily body Bolton Burton Calvinist cause century Christ Christian Cicero comfort concern consolation context culture cure demonic demonology depression devil discourse disease disorder Dissenting distemper early modern early seventeenth-century eighteenth eighteenth-century English Malady evangelical experience faith fear and sorrow female hysteria George Cheyne God's grace Greenham grief healing History human hypochondria hypochondria and hysteria Ibid imputed righteousness Joan Drake John language late sixteenth latitudinarians London MacDonald madness Madness and Civilization Mandeville medical theory medicine melancholic condition mental ministers moral philosophical natural natural philosophy nonconformist Oxford passions pastoral Patrick Perkins physical physician polite practical divinity Puritan reason Religion religious despair religious melancholy Restoration Robert Burton Rogers Roy Porter sensibility seventeenth sins sixteenth and early soul spiritual affliction Spleen suffering symptoms Temple theological therapeutic Thomas Thomas Secker thought Treatise treatment of melancholy trouble of mind Tusculan Disputations vapors Willis women writing