Abstract
Using Browning’s poems ‘Cleon’ and ‘An Epistle Containing the Strange Medical Experience of Karshish’, this epilogue sums up the ways in which the new medical psychology of the early nineteenth century led to a shift in the understanding of poetic inspiration, and discusses what spaces, if any, remained for genuine visionary experience within the new ‘medico-psychological’ paradigm of the period.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
Primary Sources
Browning, Robert. 1983–2009. Poetical Works, eds. Ian Jack, Rowena Fowler, Margaret Smith, Robert Inglesfield, et al., 15 vols. Oxford: Clarendon.
Secondary Sources
Armstrong, Isobel. 1996. Victorian Poetry. London: Routledge.
Faas, Ekbert. 1988. Retreat into the Mind: Victorian Poetry and the Rise of Psychiatry. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Gill, Stephen. 1998. Wordsworth and the Victorians. Oxford: Clarendon.
Martens, Britta. 2011. Browning, Victorian Poetics, and the Romantic Legacy: Challenging the Personal Voice. Farnham: Ashgate.
Tate, Gregory. 2012. The Poet’s Mind: The Psychology of Victorian Poetry 1830–1870. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2019 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Crawford, J. (2019). Epilogue: ‘It is strange.’. In: Inspiration and Insanity in British Poetry. Palgrave Studies in Literature, Science and Medicine. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-21671-9_7
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-21671-9_7
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-21670-2
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-21671-9
eBook Packages: Literature, Cultural and Media StudiesLiterature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)