Melancholy and the Care of the Soul: Religion, Moral Philosophy and Madness in Early Modern EnglandMelancholy is rightly taken to be a central topic of concern in 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 melancholy 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 to be as much a 'disease of the soul' as a condition originating in bodily disorder, Dr. Schmidt reveals how insights and techniques developed in the context of ancient philosophical and early Christian discussions of the good of the soul were applied by a variety of early modern authorities to the treatment of melancholy. The book also explores ways in which various diagnostic and therapeutic languages shaped the experience and expression of melancholy and situates the melancholic experience in a series of broader discourses, including the language of religious despair dominating English Calvinism, the late Renaissance concern with the government of the passions, and eighteenth-century debates surrounding politeness and material consumption. In addition, it explores how the shifting languages of early modern melancholy altered and enabled certain perceptions of gender. As a study in intellectual history, Melancholy and the Care of the Soul offers new insights into a wide variety of early modern texts, including literary representations and medical works, and critically engages with a broad range of current scholarship in addressing some of the central interpretive issues in the history of early modern medicine, psychiatry, religion and culture. |
Contents
Melancholy among the Passions in Seventeenth | |
Melancholy and the moral physiology | |
The Pastoral Care of Melancholy in Calvinist England | |
Anglicanism Melancholy and the Restoration | |
An Anglican tradition of consolation | |
The Puritan Tradition? Nonconformist Practical | |
consolation | |
Politeness and religious despair | |
medical theory | |
Morality Politics | |
of passion | |
Conclusion | |
Index | |
Other editions - View all
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 Cambridge University Press cause century Christian Church Cicero comfort consolation context culture demonic demonology depression devil discourse disease disorder Dissenting distemper early modern early seventeenth-century eighteenth eighteenth-century emotional England English Malady Essays evangelical experience faith George Cheyne God's grace Greenham grief Healing History human hypochondria hypochondria and hysteria Ibid imputed righteousness Joan Drake John John Dunton language late sixteenth latitudinarians London MacDonald madness Madness and Civilization Mandeville medical theory medicine 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 Richard Richard Baxter Robert Burton Rogers Roy Porter sensibility seventeenth sixteenth and early social soul spiritual affliction Spleen suffering symptoms Temple theological therapeutic therapy Thomas thought Treatise treatment of melancholy trouble of mind Tusculan Disputations William Willis women writing