Overview
- Addresses scholars within the fields of Romantic and Victorian Studies, literature and science and the medical humanities, plant studies, addiction studies, and interdisciplinary approaches to medicine
- Examines drugs by going beyond discourses on literature and addiction
- Focuses on the history of the science of psychoactive drugs alongside their cultural, social, and political contexts
Part of the book series: Palgrave Studies in Literature, Science and Medicine (PLSM)
Access this book
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Other ways to access
Table of contents (13 chapters)
-
Drugs and Genre
-
Rethinking the Pharmacological Body: Drugs and the Borders of the Human
-
The Cultural Politics of Known Drug Effects
-
Historicising the Prescription: Medication and Self-Medication
Keywords
About this book
This collection of essays examines the way psychoactive substances are described and discussed within late eighteenth- and nineteenth-century British literary and cultural texts. Covering several genres, such as novels, poetry, autobiography and non-fiction, individual essays provide insights on eighteenth- and nineteenth-century understandings of drug effects of opium, alcohol and many other plant-based substances. Contributors consider both contemporary and recent medical knowledge in order to contextualise and illuminate understandings of how drugs were utilised as stimulants, as relaxants, for pleasure, as pain relievers and for other purposes. Chapters also examine the novelty of experimentations of drugs in conversation with the way literary texts incorporate them, highlighting the importance of literary and cultural texts for addressing ethical questions.
Reviews
“This remarkable book offers an intersectional grouping of essays which analyse the psychopharmacological knowledges of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in cultural texts of the era. Multiple perspectives in medical humanities, literature, and science script an intriguing new story around these knowledges. The complex relational boundaries between our gendered bodies and our drugs are embedded in their historical contexts and the often ambiguous nature of psychoactive substances. Readers interested in the intertwined strands of science and culture will profit from spending some time with these insightful essays.” (Donald Bruce, Professor, School of Languages and Literatures, University of Guelph, Canada)
“This pioneering study of drug effects, not just addiction, in the nineteenth century ranges from opium to alcohol, lavender water, wormwood, and other herbal substances. Roxburgh and Henke have done a service for the fields of both medical humanities and literature and science by revealing the important role literary and cultural texts played in making possible the emergence of psychopharmacology in the next century.” (Jay Clayton, William R. Kenan Professor and Director of the Curb Center, Vanderbilt University, USA)
“This collection offers useful consideration of the history of late-eighteenth- and nineteenth-century pharmacology; its essays suggest all kinds of possibilities for new conversations about medical science and the literary imagination.” (Adam Colman, author of Drugs and the Addiction Aesthetic in Nineteenth-Century Literature (Palgrave Macmillan 2019))
Editors and Affiliations
About the editors
Natalie Roxburgh is Lecturer and Research Fellow in English Literary Studies at the University of Siegen, Germany. She has published widely on a variety of topics—such as science, economics and politics—from the seventeenth century to the present, including a monograph titled Representing Public Credit: Credible Commitment, Fiction, and the Rise of the Financial Subject (2016).
Jennifer S. Henke is Assistant Professor at the University of Bremen, Germany. Her publications include topics ranging from Shakespeare in film to science and posthumanism. She is the author of the monograph Unsex Me Here (2014), and her second book deals with medicine and the pregnant female body in eighteenth-century literature and culture.
Bibliographic Information
Book Title: Psychopharmacology in British Literature and Culture, 1780–1900
Editors: Natalie Roxburgh, Jennifer S. Henke
Series Title: Palgrave Studies in Literature, Science and Medicine
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-53598-8
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan Cham
eBook Packages: Literature, Cultural and Media Studies, Literature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)
Copyright Information: The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020
Hardcover ISBN: 978-3-030-53597-1Published: 30 September 2020
Softcover ISBN: 978-3-030-53600-8Published: 01 October 2021
eBook ISBN: 978-3-030-53598-8Published: 29 September 2020
Series ISSN: 2634-6435
Series E-ISSN: 2634-6443
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: XIV, 302
Number of Illustrations: 1 b/w illustrations
Topics: Nineteenth-Century Literature, Eighteenth-Century Literature, History of Science, Cultural Studies, Philosophy of Medicine, Drug Safety and Pharmacovigilance