Art Spiegelman is one of the most important figures in the history of American comics. His work Maus (1980 and 1991) is arguably the landmark text in the field of comic book studies. Given the relatively recent reissue of his first collection Breakdowns (2008) and the publication of his interview/essay collection/scrapbook Metamaus (2011), it is likely that his work will continue to be the subject of critical interest. This thesis concerns the collections Breakdowns (1977 and 2008), Maus (1980 and 1991) and In the Shadow of No Towers (2004). It represents the first book-length extended study of Spiegelman s three major works. The central argument put forth in this thesis is that the Spiegelman oeuvre articulates and manifests a madness which its author perceives to underlie supposedly rational society. In support of this thesis I will employ critical models from the following fields: Holocaust studies, trauma theory, the anti-psychiatry movement, theories concerning the representation of madness, formalist analyses of comics, and Genette s narratological taxonomy.

This study uses a narrative analytic approach to explore the similarities and differences between pre-Enlightenment and post-Enlightenment firsthand accounts of madness in order to answer the question; what is the relationship between madness, narrative, understanding, identity and recovery? Drawing on the work of Foucault, the research traces the historical and cultural development of conceptualisations of reason and unreason, the rise of psychiatry and the marginalisation of the voice of madness. I argue that this marginalisation is continued in narrative research where the focus is on the stories of the physically ill, rather than madness. The narrative method provides a means of giving space to these marginalised voices and it is Bakhtin's constructs of dialogicism, polyphony, unfinalizability and the chronotope that provide the tools for the narrative analysis of two female English writers; Margery Kempe and Mary Barnes. The analysis highlights three critical issues in relation to firsthand narratives of madness. First, the blurred boundaries between madness and mysticism and the role of metaphor in understanding distressing experiences. Second, the complex, multi-dimensional nature of subjective timespace that challenges the linear assumptions underlying both narrative and recovery, which, I argue, demands a radical reconceptualisation of both constructs. Third, the liminal social positioning within the analysed accounts is closely related to Bakhtin's notion of unfinalizability, a form of being that enables the search for meaning and the transformation of the self. Insights can be gained from this research that may place stories and understanding central in contemporary healthcare.

This thesis delves deep into an analysis of madness in two seventeenth century tragic plays: William Shakespeare's Macbeth and John Webster's The Duchess of Malfi. The first portion of the dissertation will provide historical background and context. The rest will be a critical literary analysis centered around the argument that both plays present an inextricable connection between loss of mental clarity and gender.

This thesis examines the constructions of madness and hysteria as diagnoses used to subjugate the protagonists in Bessie Head’s A Question of Power and Kate Chopin’s The Awakening. In juxtaposing these texts, themes including “lone womanhood” surface to identify both protagonists’ means for liberation from patriarchal and colonialist oppression. While for Edna of The Awakening, liberation from the hysteria diagnosis comes through bodily sovereignty, A Question of Power’s Elizabeth is freed from the madness rendering by reclaiming her mental interiority.

Ecocriticism explores the way in which artists interact with, interpret and represent the natural world. The concept of “nature,” according to ecocriticism, goes beyond simply flora and fauna, extending to human nature as well. In Shakespeare's England, a person's nature was determined by his bodily humors, so the melancholy humor particularly lends itself to an ecocritical approach because it is inextricably linked to the natural world. Transcending genre, melancholy is not limited to the green world of comedy but rather appears in tragedy as well. In As You Like It, the melancholy Jaques offers a foil for the forest teeming with sanguine lovers. In Hamlet, however, melancholy becomes a much more bleak and ambiguous quality, raising questions concerning the nature of acting and suicide. In the study of melancholy within As You Like It and Hamlet, an ecocritical perspective offers a unique insight into the way Shakespeare experiences and interacts with the natural world.

(in English) Initially, this master's degree thesis exposes the professional life and the evolution as author of Laura Restrepo, pointing out her work and direction in literature. Then, an introduction to the studied novel, Delirio, is presented and its style, the formal and narrative techniques and the synopsis is developed. Second part of the thesis analyses key elements of the novel that are thematically linked with madness (the room, childhood, seeing beyond, sexuality, lying, water, delirium and green color). The symbology of these elements is analyzed, which is later applied, in the last part of the thesis, to deepen the possible symbology of some concrete scenes of the novel, in which the protagonist decides to paint the walls of her apartment in green. Key words madness, delirium, symbol, symbolism, green, Laura Restrepo

« Les Grecs et les Latins n’avaient pas fait du trouble de la raison une analyse assez profonde et détaillée pour penser à imposer une dénomination collective à un genre de ses symptômes, fussent-ils les plus remarquables de tous. Ceux dont il est ici question, les hallucinations, ils les avaient observés sans doute, ils les connaissaient. Mais ils ne les rassemblent pas sous une désignation générale ». Ceci était l’avis du médecin L.-F. Lélut (L’amulette de Pascal, 1846), un jugement qui reflète l’image que la science de son époque s’était faite de la réflexion des Anciens sur les pathologies de la perception dans le délire. À l’exclusion des recherches d’empreinte positiviste visant à retrouver les catégories psychiatriques dans certaines manifestations pathologiques dont nous avons trace dans les textes classiques, aucune étude générale n’a jamais été consacrée aux liens établis par les Anciens entre altérations cognitives et désordres morbides de la perception. Cette recherche se propose de combler cette lacune, en étudiant de manière systématique les textes anciens faisant état de cet ensemble d’expériences pathologiques, et ce sur la longue durée, depuis la physiologie présocratique jusqu’aux traités médicaux latins de l’Antiquité tardive. Après une introduction détaillant la méthodologie de recherche et le status quæstionis, le travail s’articule en trois parties. Dans la première, j’analyse les textes de la Collection hippocratique dans lesquels il est question d’altérations des facultés cognitives et sensorielles, retraçant le paradigme de compréhension de ces phénomènes propre aux médecins grecs des Ve-IVe siècles. Une comparaison avec les scènes de folie visionnaire du théâtre attique contemporain permet de faire ressortir la priorité chronologique et spéculative des représentations euripidéennes de la vision morbide comme phénomène trompeur, en opposition à l’image archaïque du visionnaire comme maître de vérité – un trait dont la médecine rationnelle saura aussitôt tirer profit à sa manière dans ses descriptions des syndromes hallucinatoires. La deuxième partie du travail retrace l’histoire de la réflexion philosophique antique sur les troubles de la perception depuis Alcméon jusqu’à Épictète, à travers le double prisme de la physiologie de la perception et de la gnoséologie. Refusant et distançant le modèle matérialiste des Présocratiques, Platon et Aristote articulent ouvertement le problème des perceptions altérées de la folie à la fois en termes de vérité/fausseté et de reconstruction physiologique, dans le but de repousser les objections relativistes des Sophistes. L’essor du débat hellénistique entre Stoïciens et Académiciens tire son origine d’une opposition semblable entre des conceptions dogmatiques reposant sur une ‘harmonie préétablie’ entre l’homme et les objets de sa connaissance et, d’autre part, les positions sceptiques de ceux qui n’admettent la distinction des sensations de l’homme sain de celle du fou. La substance de ce débat, qui ne s’épuise pas avant la fin de l’Académie platonicienne au Ier siècle av. J.-C., se prolongera dans le Stoïcisme d’époque romaine et sera accueillie de bon gré par la tradition médicale postérieure : dans la troisième partie de l’enquête, une attention spécifique est accordée aux textes de Celse, Arétée de Cappadoce, Asclépiade de Bithynie, Galien, Cælius Aurélien, où l’héritage philosophique hellénistique se greffe sur la tradition clinique et pharmacologique précédente, en donnant lieu à de nouvelles conceptions nosologiques qui serviront de point de départ incontournable à toute réflexion médicale postérieure sur les troubles sensoriels. / «The Greeks and Romans did not analyze the trouble of mind deeply enough to give a common denomination to a kind of its symptoms, as relevant as they may be. They surely observed and knew hallucinations, of which we are talking about. But they did not recollect them under a general definition». This was the opinion of the French physician L.-F. Lélut (L’amulette de Pascal, 1846), a statement which clearly reflects the opinion of scientists of his time about ancient analysis of psychopathological sensory alterations. Exception made for a positivistic interest, aiming at recognizing psychiatric categories in some pathological phenomena depicted in classical literature, no general study has ever been devoted to the relationship between cognitive alterations and pathological disorders of perception. This research intends to address such shortcoming through a long-term investigation of classical texts, by taking into account this cluster of pathological experiences, from Pre-Socratic physiology to the medical treatises of Late Antiquity. This work is structured in three sections: first, a methodological introduction and an analysis of the current state of art leads to an inquiry on Hippocratic texts about cognitive and sensory alterations (5th- 4th centuries BC). A comparison between medical literature and theatrical episodes of visionary madness reveals the chronological and speculative priority of Euripidean representations of morbid visions as deceptive phenomena, in opposition to the archaic image of the visionary as ‘master of truth’. The second part of the thesis focuses on the history of philosophical thought about troubles of perception, from Alcmæon to Epictetus, through the twofold lens of physiology of perception and epistemology. By refusing the Pre-Socratic materialistic model, Plato and Aristotle openly formulated the problem of distorted perceptions of madness in terms of truth and falsehood and physiological explicability, in order to push back sophistic and relativistic arguments. The development of Hellenistic Stoic/Academic debates originated from an analogous opposition between dogmatic conceptions – resting upon a ‘pre-established harmony’ between men and their objects of knowledge – and, on the other side, skeptical objections about the supposed indiscernibility of sane and mad perceptions. The core of this debate, which lasted until the end of the Platonic Academy in the 1st century BC, was perpetuated by the Middle Stoicism and then received by the subsequent medical tradition: in the third section, particular attention is devoted to the treatises written by Celsus, Aretæaus of Cappadocia, Asclepiades, Galen, Cælius Aurelianus, in which the Hellenistic philosophical heritage grafted on to the earlier clinical and pharmacological traditions. This turning point represents the very foundation of every medical consideration about sensory disorders until the end of Classical Antiquity.

Dostoiévski, escritor russo do século XIX, compôs uma vasta obra, na qual procurou dar voz a todos os dilemas e contrastes presentes na alma humana; e conseguiu este feito sem procurar impor suas próprias verdades, sabendo que estas, em realidade, são sempre relativas. Um dos temas mais recorrentes em sua obra é a questão da loucura e do desequilíbrio, não só de seus personagens, mas também de fatos e acontecimentos, mostrando que, muitas vezes, na loucura do caos da vida, reside uma ordem e uma lógica superiores e, portanto, incompreensíveis para a mente humana, a qual acaba por considerar estes acontecimentos como fruto da insanidade. Isto despertou nosso interesse e resolvemos dedicar nosso estudo a este inquietante tema. / Dostoyevsky, Russian writer of the 19th century, accomplished a large literary output, in which he sought to give voice to all the dilemmas and contrasts existing in the human soul, and he perpetrated this deed without attempting to impose his own truths, knowing that these, in fact, are always relative. One of the most recurrent themes in his work is the issue of madness and instability, not only of his characters, but also of facts and events, showing that, oftentimes, in the madness existing in the chaos of life reside both a superior order and a superior logic and, therefore, incomprehensible to the human mind, which ends up regarding these events as a fruit of insanity. That aroused our interest and we have decided to dedicate this study to this unsettling theme.

Na primeira metade do século XX, na cidade de São Paulo, muitas mulheres foram internadas em instituições destinadas ao tratamento de doentes mentais. No contexto da industrialização e crescimento populacional da cidade é possível observar uma grande mudança na vida cotidiana das mulheres e homens que ali viviam. A emancipação da mulher e os novos papéis destinados a esta passam a ser discutidos em todos os setores da sociedade, incluindo médicos e profissinais da saúde. A partir deste contexto esta dissertação apresenta uma investigação acerca da vida das mulheres internadas no Santório Pinel de Pirituba entre os anos de 1929 e 1944. O tema é abordado por meio da análise dos prontuários médicos produzidos acerca das pacientes, documento este que revela, além da prática médica da psiquiatria da época, os modos de vida das mulheres internadas. / In the first half of the 20th century in the city São Paulo a lot of women were put into institutions for the treatment of mental illnesses. In the context of the industrialization and the big growth of the population, the men and women living in the city faced a big change in their everyday life. The emancipation of women and the new roles that were appointedto them were soon discussed by all members of society including doctors and professionals working in the health system. Within this context, this master thesis presents a research about the lives of women who were institutionalized between 1929 and 1944 in the Sanatório Pinel of Pirituba. The subject is approched through the medical records of the female patients, not only revealing the medical practice at that time but also the way of life of the instituitionalized women.

Made available in DSpace on 2016-04-28T20:38:00Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Fabiano Massarro Salvador.pdf: 1293848 bytes, checksum: 395d3d892b74d358404a6d6b5413bfaa (MD5) Previous issue date: 2011-12-02 / The questioning which takes course throughout the pages of this work is: What could there be of such great impact in Auto-de-Fé? In the process of the present work, Elias Canetti‟s novel provoked many doubts, reflections and problems; we realized that this author‟s work is involved by many problematics. In order to analyze his work, it was necessary to trail another path besides that of Psychoanalysis. The undertaking, in this sense, was made up of the historical analysis of different cultural periods, specially German ones. I thus ventured into the origin of the German Romantic Period, its history and main artists. Analyzing this movement, I noticed that it is very interesting and rich, principally for having been a time that served as stimulus to Freud. Even so, I realized that the journey would be incomplete if I focused only on Romantism. The questions of beautiful and sublime give space to other themes, more subjective ones, which are strange to the being. I believed it would be important to establish an interface with the Expressionist Movement, in which madness and the esthetics concerning the body would be quite different. The body, in the Expressionist movement, brought forth the marks of a shattered subjectivity. These choices were made with an aim to promote a wide reflection about the historical context in which Auto-de-Fé was imagined and developed by Canetti. This work was created when the austro-germanic culture was, in a certain way, expiring. The lights of the Austro-Hungarian Empire were beginning to die out, the Weimar Republic was a caricature of power encarnation. The growing antissemitism in Eastern European countries, with the uprising of the German National Socialist Party, already antecipating the sinister aspects to come, the Viennese nihilism showing that the Austrian society was sunk in obsolete values concerning man, art and society, and also the gathering of important arts names at this notable period. This and other factors led us to the conclusion that tha analysis of madness, of which Peter Kien will be a victim in Auto-de-Fé, is a sad metaphor of what was to come. Understanding the nearly prophetical aspect of Canetti‟s words would only be possible if we had as a guide the pages of German cultural history, a culture marked by the sign of dualism / O questionamento que irá se desenrolar nas páginas deste trabalho é: O que haveria de tão impactante na obra Auto-de-Fé? No decurso da confecção do trabalho, o romance de Elias Canetti suscitou muitas dúvidas, reflexões e problemas, e percebemos que as problemáticas que envolvem essa obra são inúmeras. Para analisarmos a obra de Elias Canetti, fez-se necessário percorrer outro caminho que não somente o da psicanálise. A empreitada, neste aspecto, foi sendo construída por meio de análises históricas de diferentes períodos culturais, predominantemente germânicos. Para tanto me detive nas raízes do Movimento Romântico Alemão, sua história e seus principais nomes. Analisando este movimento, notei como ele era interessante e rico, sobretudo por ser uma época que serviu de estímulo a Freud. Mesmo assim, percebi que o caminho ficaria incompleto se permanecesse somente no âmbito do Romantismo. As questões acerca do belo e sublime vão dando espaço para outras temáticas, questões mais subjetivas, estranhas ao ser. Acreditei que seria importante fazer uma interface com o Movimento Expressionista, onde a loucura e a estética acerca do corpo seriam bastante distintas. O corpo no Expressionismo traria as marcas de uma subjetividade em cacos. Essas escolhas foram feitas com o intuito de promover uma reflexão ampla acerca do contexto histórico em que a obra foi pensada e confeccionada por Canetti. Auto-de-Fé foi construída num contexto em que a cultura austrogermânica estava de alguma maneira fenecendo. As luzes do Império Austro-Húngaro começavam a bruxulear, a República de Weimar era uma caricatura da encarnação dos poderes. O antissemitismo crescente nos países do leste europeu, com a ascensão do Partido Nacional Socialista Alemão, já antecipando aspectos sinistros, o niilismo vienense mostrando como a sociedade austríaca estava imersa em valores obsoletos no que dizia respeito ao homem, arte e sociedade, e também a aglomeração de nomes desta notável época no que concerne as artes. Estes e outros fatores levaram-nos à conclusão de que a análise da loucura da qual Peter Kien será vítima em Auto-de-Fé é uma metáfora triste daquilo que estava por vir. Entender o caráter quase profético das palavras de Elias Canetti só seria possível, tendo como eixo norteador as páginas da história da cultura germânica, uma cultura marcada pelo signo da dualidade