The Most Dreadful Visitation - 9780853238393

The Most Dreadful VisitationMale Madness in Victorian Fiction\nAuthor(s): Valerie Pedlar\nFormat: Hardback\nPublisher: Liverpool University Press, United Kingdom\nImprint: Liverpool University Press\nISBN-13: 9780853238393, 978-0853238393\nSynopsis\nAn Open Access edition of this book is available on the Liverpool University Press website and the OAPEN library.\n\nVictorian literature is rife with scenes of madness, with mental disorder functioning as everything from a simple plot device to a commentary on the foundations of Victorian society. But while madness in Victorian fiction has been much studied, most scholarship has focused on the portrayal of madness in women; male mental disorder in the period has suffered comparative neglect. Valerie Pedlar corrects this imbalance in The Most Dreadful Visitation. This extraordinary study explores a wide range of Victorian writings to consider the relationship between the portrayal of mental illness in literary works and the portrayal of s.