Smart’s Authority and the Eighteenth-Century Mad-Business

Abstract

The line between madness and divine experience was blurred in the eighteenth century, just as it is in many places today. Strong religious convictions were subject to satirical attacks as enthusiasm, while Methodists like Wesley and Whitefield had to defend themselves from ridicule and accusations of madness and fanaticism.¹ Conversely, despite secularisation, and the association of the Enlightenment with rationalism and materialism, English society was still very religious. While some members of the medical profession asserted that madness was a disease with an organic basis, the material evidence for this was far from established. Where some identified madness, others found a religious epiphany. Moreover, the language employed by mad-doctors to describe the experiences of those designated ‘mad’ was sometimes strongly resisted, not least by the people who found themselves in madhouses. The eighteenth-century poet, Christopher Smart, and one influential mad-doctor who treated him, William Battie, provide a case in point. This chapter will explore the kind of language used to describe madness in the mid-eighteenth century, particularly that centred around confinement, and how and why it was contested. I will draw attention to the rationale for confinement employed by a leading mad-doctor, and the poetic response of a man writing while incarcerated.