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- Title
Spasmodic Affections: Poetry, Pathology, and the Spasmodic Hero.
- Authors
Blair, Kirstie
- Abstract
This article presents information related to spasmodic affections in poetry and pathology. The pathological connotations of spasm and spasmodic have received little attention in modern criticism, yet from the 1780s to the 1850s and beyond, it was precisely these connotations which would have been most familiar to readers. By exploring the unnoticed medical context of spasm, this article will suggest ways in which critical discourse about spasmodic poetry exploited medical implications of weakness, effeminacy, nervousness and lack of will in order to trope Spasmodic poetry as pathological.
- Subjects
SPASMS; CRITICISM; CRITICAL discourse analysis; POETRY (Literary form); PATHOLOGY; ASTHENIA; VICTORIAN (Literary period)
- Publication
Victorian Poetry, 2004, Vol 42, Issue 4, p473
- ISSN
0042-5206
- Publication type
Literary Criticism
- DOI
10.1353/vp.2005.0001