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Becoming Insomniac

How Sleeplessness Alarmed Modernity

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  • © 2014

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Authors:
  1. Lee Scrivner
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Table of contents (11 chapters)

  1. Front Matter

    Pages i-x
    Download chapter PDF

  2. Prologomenon

    • Lee Scrivner
    Pages 1-13

  3. A Modern Insomnia

    • Lee Scrivner
    Pages 14-33

  4. The Freeing of the Will

    • Lee Scrivner
    Pages 34-57

  5. The Narrowing of the Attention

    • Lee Scrivner
    Pages 58-80

  6. In Vicious Circles: The Physiologies of Exhaustion

    • Lee Scrivner
    Pages 81-98

  7. Mental Hyperactivity and the Hematologies of Sleep

    • Lee Scrivner
    Pages 99-115

  8. Psychologorrhea

    • Lee Scrivner
    Pages 116-135

  9. Slumber and Self Subdivided

    • Lee Scrivner
    Pages 136-156

  10. Prostheses and Antitheses

    • Lee Scrivner
    Pages 157-180

  11. Insomniac Modernism

    • Lee Scrivner
    Pages 181-209

  12. Volitional Regress and Egress

    • Lee Scrivner
    Pages 210-213

  13. Back Matter

    Pages 214-257
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Keywords

About this book

A study of the history of modern insomnia, this book explores how poets, journalists, and doctors of the Victorian period found themselves in near-universal agreement that modernity and sleep were somehow incompatible. It investigates how psychologists, philosophers and literary artists worked to articulate its causes, and its potential cures.

Reviews

"...richly detailed and thorough in its research, Becoming Insomniac will no doubt prove a piquant counterpoint and complement to works such as Anson Rabinbach's The Human Motor: Energy, Fatigue and the Origins of Modernity (1990). Certainly, Scrivner has produced a novel and engaging study. Through uniting psychological, philosophical and literary perspectives, his history occupies a singular interdisciplinary nexus, offering much to the evaluation of insomnia as it was perceived in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and indeed in the Internet age." - Eleanor Dobson, Cultural History

About the author

Lee Scrivner has taught English and the Humanities at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, USA; The University of London, Birkbeck, UK; and at Bo?aziçi University in Istanbul, Turkey. He currently resides in Colombia with his wife and three sons.

Bibliographic Information

  • Book Title: Becoming Insomniac

  • Book Subtitle: How Sleeplessness Alarmed Modernity

  • Authors: Lee Scrivner

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137268747

  • Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan London

  • eBook Packages: Palgrave History Collection, History (R0)

  • Copyright Information: Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited 2014

  • Hardcover ISBN: 978-1-137-26873-0Published: 24 September 2014

  • Softcover ISBN: 978-1-349-44359-8Published: 01 January 2014

  • eBook ISBN: 978-1-137-26874-7Published: 24 September 2014

  • Edition Number: 1

  • Number of Pages: X, 257

  • Topics: Social History, History of Science, Cultural History, Medicine/Public Health, general, Modern History

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