MW 2:30-3:45pm
HU 108

This class rests on the assumption that definitions of madness and
melancholy are, in Roy Porter’s words, “not fixed points but culture-
relative.”  We’ll read literary, medical, and philosophical accounts
of madness and melancholy written from the classical period to the
early seventeenth-century. Our reading will be comparative and we’ll
seek to understand each account of madness and/or melancholy in the
context in which it was written.  Everything we read was written
long before the days of asylums and psychiatry, Nietzsche and
nihilism, Freud and family therapy.  The writers we’ll read, even
those who know of Oedipus, define madness in relation to love,
genius, gender, power, and the gods or God.  We’ll consider, too,
whether melancholy was seen or should be considered a form of
madness. We’ll look also at how, or whether, those writers define
madness and melancholy in relation to reason, evil, or sickness.
Note: I have not yet finalized the reading for the class, and that
we won’t be reading work excerpts by all of the authors currently
listed under “Excerpts.”  However, it’s safe for you to assume that
you should purchase all the books and plays that are followed by the
name of a publisher.  Books for the course will be available at
Boxcar Books, 408 E. 6th Street.

Required Reading
Erasmus, In Praise of Folly (Penguin).
Euripides, Medea and The Bacchae in Euripides, Ten Plays (Signet).
Plato, Phaedrus (Hackett).
Shakespeare, Hamlet (Arden).
Shakespeare, King Lear (Arden).
Excerpts from work by a number of the following writers: (Pseudo)
Aristotle, Robert Burton, Chaucer, Cicero, Marie de France, Galen,
Hipppocrates, Seneca.

Requirements
•Two 4-6 page essays and two 6-8 page essays.  One of the 6-8 page
essays will be a revision of the one of the two 4-6 page essays. 80%
of the final grade.
•Attendance and participation in discussion and in-class activities.
Every student will bring five typed discussion questions to class
every day. Your questions will provide the base for class
discussion.10% of the final grade.
•A graded exercise designed to display your ability to find and use
information in IUCAT, WorldCat, the online Modern Language
Association International Bibliography, and a number of other online
databases. 10% of the final grade.