Marcus, Nathalie Charron (Author)
University of Virginia
Beizer, Janet
Edition Details: Advisor: Beizer, Janet
Physical Details: 343 pp.
Language: English
What is genius? How is a genius different from everyone else? And how can a creative genius---or an artist---express the process of his or her imagination? These questions are central to this dissertation. From the mid-eighteenth century to the beginning of the twentieth, French doctors took a special interest in artists, particularly in men of letters. At the same time, the modern concept of genius was developing. Doctors initially diagnosed the poor health of writers as a result of their lifestyles and their excessive sensibility, but during nineteenth century the diagnosis was transformed: genius itself was considered an illness, a disease of the nerves called nvrose. While doctors pondered the symptoms of men of letters, writers turned to pathology to describe their creativity and imagination. Creative Symptoms examines medical texts on the relationship between the mind and the body, and on the hygiene of men of letters by doctors such as Samuel- Auguste-David Tissot, P. J. G. Cabanis, and Jacques- Joseph Moreau de Tours, and follows the development of the stereotype of the ailing artist. This dissertation then explores the intersection between medical writing and creative writing through the works of Germaine de Stal, Edmond and Jules de Goncourt, and Charles Baudelaire, analyzing how these authors try to express the mysterious workings of the imagination through the ailing body. Madame de Stal's Corinne, ou l'Italie begins with the healthy genius Corinne, but then reveals the full extent of her brilliance through the destruction of her body. Edmond and Jules de Goncourt's Journal, Mmoire de la vie littraire, and Edmond de Goncourt's novel La Faustin illustrate an interconnectivity between creativity and illness through a variety of ailments---particularly nervous ailments. Though they suffered from their symptoms, the brothers also believed their maladies enhanced their writing. Finally, Charles Baudelaire's poetry and essays offer the portrait of an artist who revels in the destructive forces of the imagination and the power of excess, all the while struggling with pain. He creates a new hygiene for men of letters, embracing nervous ailments, finally proposing that the ideal state of creativity is convalescence, a condition between illness and health.
...MoreDescription Cited in Diss. Abstr. Int. A 64 (2003): 1682. UMI order no. 3091132.
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