Representing Mental Illness in Late Medieval France - 9781843845126

Representing Mental Illness in Late Medieval FranceMachines, Madness, Metaphor\nAuthor(s): Julie Singer\nFormat: Hardback\nPublisher: Boydell & Brewer Ltd, United Kingdom\nImprint: D.S. Brewer\nISBN-13: 9781843845126, 978-1843845126\nSynopsis\nAn exploration of the medieval mind as a machine, and how it might be affected and immobiled, in textual reactions to the madness of Charles VI of France.\n\nAt the turn of the fifteenth century it must have seemed to many French people that the world was going mad. King Charles VI suffered his first bout of mental illness in 1392, and he underwent intermittent bouts of frenzy, melancholy and ever-scarcer lucidity until his death in 1422. The king's scarcely mentionable malady was mirrored at every level of social experience, from the irrational civil war through which the body politic tore itself apart, to reports of elevated suicide rates among the common people. In this political environment, where affairs of state were closely linked to.