{"id":37,"date":"2022-02-05T11:47:41","date_gmt":"2022-02-05T11:47:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ekbertfaas.net\/majorworks\/?p=37"},"modified":"2022-02-05T22:45:04","modified_gmt":"2022-02-05T22:45:04","slug":"retreat-into-the-mind-victorian-poetry-and-the-rise-of-psychiatry-312pp-princeton-university-press-1988-paperback-edition-1991","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/ekbertfaas.net\/majorworks\/?p=37","title":{"rendered":"Retreat into the Mind. Victorian Poetry and the Rise of Psychiatry<\/em> (312pp) Princeton University Press, 1988 (Paperback Edition, 1991)"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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\"\"<\/a>“Now Faas has turned to Victorian psychiatry and poetry, an intersection that narrows the distance between literature and medicine, demonstrating how each anticipates the other. Retreat into the Mind<\/em> is a splendid book worthy of praise and congratulation, not only because it has dealt so judiciously with its subject, but also because it continues the pattern of searching out significant projects at a time when so much of what passes for scholarship replays old recordings. \u2026 Excellent.\u201d (G.S. Rousseau, Isis<\/em>, 83, 3, 1991, 581-82)<\/p>\n

\u201cThe cumulative effect of the evidence Faas brings is persuasive in demonstrating the historical and theoretical points of intersection between poetry and mental pathology … For Faas, the chief precursors of the psychological content and dramatic form of the monologue were, on one hand, Wordsworth, with his \u2018rigorous inquisition\u2019 of the mind and his definition of poetry as \u2018the history or science of feelings\u2019; and, on the other, Shakespeare, whose ability to probe and to represent dramatically (especially in his soliloquies) the whole range of human thoughts and feelings was rediscovered and celebrated in the 19th-century. If Shakespeare provided dramatic models of pathological behaviour \u2013 as J.C. Bucknill and other alienists thought he did \u2013 then Wordworth (and Coleridge) pointed the way toward new possibilities for psychological poetry through the \u2018greater Romantic lyric\u2019 and the conversation poem … Perhaps most interesting from a psychoanalytic viewpoint, however, is Faas\u2019 suggestion that the actual or implied \u2018listener\u2019 in dramatic monologues \u2018tends to assume the role of the modern psychoanalyst toward his patient\u2019 (p.151) … \u2018The poets were there before me,\u2019 Freud said, but Faas shows that poetry and 19th-century mental science also went hand-in-hand part of the way.\u201d (J.Douglas Kneale, Psychoanalytic Books: A Quarterly Journal of Reviews<\/em>, 2, 2, 1991, 239-243)<\/p>\n

\u201cIn researching the book Professor Faas has scrutinized the works of some four hundred Romantic and Victorian poets, the reviews of their works in the nineteenth-century journals available at the British Library, and all the relevant critical writings of a more general nature. Additionally, he has read extensively in the books and journals of the period devoted to mental science and to the treatment of the insane. This breadth of study is reflected not only in the closely argued text, but also in the fifty pages of references and thirty-two pages of bibliography … his book is primarily written for students of English Literature, indeed he seems to have mapped out a rich seam for Ph.D studies. However, it is also of considerable interest to everyone interested in the history of ideas and to the student of the history of psychiatry.\u201d (K.L.K. Trick, History of Psychiatry<\/em>, 1,4, 1990, 434-435)<\/p>\n

\u201cRetreat into the Mind<\/em> \u2026 is an attempt … to study the new psychological poetry of the nineteenth century \u2013 the greater Romantic lyric and the dramatic monologue \u2013 in its relationship to contemporary mental science. As Faas correctly notes, the development of early mental science, the role of the alienists (the mental physicians), and the relationship of each to the formation of nineteenth-century thought (artistic, religious, and social) has not previously been systematically studied. His approach is exhaustive … a major concern here was to obtain a sense of what Wordsworth’s and Browning’s contemporaries thought of this new psychological poetry and how they defined its diverse forms and techniques\u2019 … The roots of the Victorian school are traced in the lives and works of the early Tennyson and Browning; to explore the full genealogy of the phenomenon Faas then works back through the Romantic \u2018science of feeling\u2019 and Shakespeare. The second half of the book is concerned with Arnold’s antipathy to psychology and his desire, particularly evidenced in the 1853 \u2018Preface,\u2019 for objectivity, and an analysis of the primary characteristics of the form and content of the dramatic monologue. It concludes with a chapter on Swinburne, whose Poems and Ballads<\/em> is seen by Faas as marking the \u2018beginning disintegration of the dramatic monologue as conceived by Victorian poets and critics\u2019 (p. 120). Given the range of materials that Faas covers, Retreat into the Mind<\/em> is a considerable achievement. He has quite literally mined contemporary commentary, and uses it extensively throughout his work to illuminate the nature and development of mental science and its complex relationship to psychological poetry.\u201d (Thomas J. Collins, Victorian Studies<\/em>, 33,4, 1990, 677-679)<\/p>\n

\u201cIn this volume the author \u2026 takes a close look at the inter-relationship between poetry and mental science, in the Victorian era.\u201d (Psychological Medicine<\/em>, 20, 1990, 234)<\/p>\n

\u201cRetreat into the Mind<\/em> is based on the careful scrutiny of \u2018some four hundred Romantic and Victorian poets\u2019 (5), plotting a line of continuity from Wordsworth and Coleridge, both of whom \u2018had shown an increasing interest in mad monks, mad mothers, and idiot boys\u2019 (177). The book expounds Browning\u2019s penchant for pathological states of mind, and Tennyson\u2019s interest in madness, dreams and visions, disease and abnormality: \u201cIf ever a poet had reason to worry about his sanity, it was Tennyson\u2019 (53). The argument is extended to Morris\u2019s depiction of necrophilia and homicidal fantasy (directions uncommon in previous dramatic monologues\u2019 (180), and ends with Swinburne\u2019s \u2018Dramatisations of the Perverse\u2019 (186).\u201d (Kenneth Millard, Notes and Queries<\/em>, March 1990,106-108)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“Now Faas has turned to Victorian psychiatry and poetry, an intersection that narrows the distance between literature and medicine, demonstrating how each anticipates the other. Retreat into the Mind is a splendid book worthy of praise and congratulation, not only … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/ekbertfaas.net\/majorworks\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/ekbertfaas.net\/majorworks\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/ekbertfaas.net\/majorworks\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ekbertfaas.net\/majorworks\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ekbertfaas.net\/majorworks\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=37"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"http:\/\/ekbertfaas.net\/majorworks\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":497,"href":"http:\/\/ekbertfaas.net\/majorworks\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37\/revisions\/497"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/ekbertfaas.net\/majorworks\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=37"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ekbertfaas.net\/majorworks\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=37"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ekbertfaas.net\/majorworks\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=37"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}