Affective Disorder and the Writing Life

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xiv

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2. “Could It Be Madness, This?” Affective Difference and the Work of Composition

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 1-1

      PDF

   2. “What Ceremony of Words Can Patch the Havoc?”: Composition and Madness

      • Stephanie Stone Horton

      Pages 2-23

   3. Muse Afire: Negotiating the Line between Creative Pursuit and Mental Illness

      • Nancer Ballard

      Pages 24-42

   4. After the Fire Goes Out: Writing before and after Treatment for an Affective Disorder

      • Lise Bagoley

      Pages 43-54

   5. Gaps on the Vita

      • Sharon O’Brien

      Pages 55-68

   6. Lunatic

      • Jeannie Parker Beard

      Pages 69-77

3. “Their Lives a Storm Whereon They Ride”: Affective (Dis)order and the Literary Imagination

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 78-78

      PDF

   2. Axing the Frozen Sea: Female Inscriptions of Madness

      • Joann K. Deiudicibus

      Pages 79-99

   3. The Things We Carry: Embodied Truth and Tim O’Brien’s Poetics of Despair

      • David Bahr

      Pages 100-115

   4. “The Incessant Rise and Fall and Fall and Rise”: Virginia Woolf Treading the Waves

      • Jessica De Santa

      Pages 116-128

   5. The Fire, the Dark, and the Beautiful Distance

      • Stephen Newton

      Pages 129-140

4. Back Matter

   Pages 141-145

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Affective Disorder and the Writing Life interrogates the mythos of the 'mad writer' through lived experience, literary analysis, writerly reflection and contemporary neuroscience. It explores how affective disorders colour, drive and sometimes silence the writing mind – and how affective difference has always informed the literary imagination.

• Imagination
• poetics
• Virginia Woolf

• Georgia State University, USA

  Stephanie Stone Horton

Lise Bagoley, Duquesne University, USA David Bahr, The City University of New York, USA Nancer Ballard, Brandeis University, USA Jessica De Santa, University of St. Andrews, UK Joann Deiudicibus, The State University of New York, USA Stephanie Stone Horton, Georgia State University, USA Marya Hornbacher, USA Sharon O'Brien, Dickinson College, USA Stephen Newton, William Paterson University, USA Jeannie Parker Beard, Georgia State University, USA

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