Retreat into the Mind

Book excerpt: Here Ekbert Faas examines the complex interrelationships among the fields of early psychiatry, poetry, and aesthetics through an in-depth study of the Victorian dramatic monologue and its Romantic antecedents. Discussing the work of over thirty major and minor poets, he focuses on what Victorian critics viewed as an unprecedented psychological school of poetry related to early psychiatry and rooted in the poetic "science of feelings" (Wordsworth). This broad historical perspective enables Faas to redefine our current terminology regarding the dramatic monologue and to document the extent to which early psychiatry shaped the poetry, poetics, and general frame of mind of the Victorians. "In the nineteenth century, English poetry began to explore the psyche in ways contemporaries recognized as new. Wordsworth and Coleridge pioneered what Arnold, Tennyson, and Browning continued. Professor Faas painstakingly documents this, and reactions to it, with reference to simultaneous psychiatric work. Fascinating."--Encounter Originally published in 1989. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.