Madness in Fiction: Literary Essays from Poe to Fowles

This book examines one work dealing with madness from each of five prominent authors. Including discussion of Fowles, Hamsun, Hesse, Kafka, and Poe, it delineates the specific type of madness the author associates with each text, and explores the reason for that - such as a historical moment, physical pressure (such as starvation), or the author’s or his narrator’s perspective. The project approaches the texts it explores from the perspective of a writer of fiction as well as from the perspective of a critic, and discusses them as unique manifestations of literary madness. It is of particular significance for those interested in the interplay of fiction, literary criticism, and psychology.

Mark Axelrod is Professor of Comparative Literature in the Department of English at Chapman University, USA, Director of the John Fowles Center for Creative Writing, and Editor of Mantissa, the literary journal of the Fowles Center. He has won a number of fiction and film awards, as well as Fulbrights and NEA grants, and has published extensively in fiction, non-fiction, film, and literary criticism. His publications include Poetics of Prose (Palgrave, 2016) and Notions of the Feminine (Palgrave, 2015).