Depression and Narrative: Telling the Dark

This title shows how the story of depression gets told in print, on screen, and online.

Table of Contents:
List of Illustrations Acknowledgments Introduction: Depression and Narrative Hilary Clark I. Negotiating Illness Identity and Stigma 1. My Symptoms, Myself: Reading Mental Illness Memoirs for Identity Assumptions Jennifer Radden 2. The Language of Madness: Representing Bipolar Disorder in Kay Redfield Jamison's An Unquiet Mind and Kate Millett's The Loony-Bin Trip Debra Beilke 3. Winter Tales: Comedy and Romance Story-Types in Narratives of Depression Brenda Dyer 4. "Repenting Prodigal": Confession, Conversion, and Shame in William Cowper's Adelphi Hilary Clark 5. Leonid Andreev's Construction of Melancholy Frederick H. White II. Gender and Depression 6. Storying Sadness: Representations of Depression in the Writings of Sylvia Plath, Louise Gluck, and Tracy Thompson Suzanne England, Carol Ganzer, and Carol Tosone 7. "Addiction got me what I needed": Depression and Drug Addiction in Elizabeth Wurtzel's Memoirs Joanne Muzak 8. Narrating the Emotional Woman: Uptake and Gender in Discourses on Depression Kimberly Emmons 9. Fact Sheets as Gendered Narratives of Depression Linda M. McMullen III. Depression across the Media 10. A Dark Web:Depression, Writing, and the Internet Kiki Benzon 11. A Meditation on Depression, Time, and Narrative Peregrination in the Film The Hours Diane R. Wiener 12. Therapy Culture and TV: The Sopranos as a Depression Narrative Deborah Staines IV. Literary Therapies 13. For the Relief of Melancholy: The Early Chinese Novel as Antidepressant Andrew Schonebaum 14. Manic-Depressive Narration and the Hermeneutics of Countertransference: Coleridge's The Rime of the Ancient Mariner Mark A. Clark V. Depression and the Limits of Narrative 15. Writing Self/Delusion:Subjectivity and Scriptotherapy in Emily Holmes Coleman's The Shutter of Snow Sophie Blanch 16. Depressing Books: W. G. Sebald and the Narratives of History Eluned Summers-Bremner List of Contributors Index

About the Author :
Hilary Clark is Professor of English at the University of Saskatchewan. She is the coeditor (with Joseph Adamson) of Scenes of Shame: Psychoanalysis, Shame, and Writing, also published by SUNY Press, and the author of The Dwelling of Weather; More Light; and Two Heavens.

Review :
"Clark has assembled an impressive collection of 16 essays treating the broad psychological topic of depression and how stories shape and dismantle it ... This collection will further the current academic interest in disability and illness studies and will appeal to readers across a range of disciplines in the humanities and social sciences." - CHOICE "...this is a useful collection of papers that brings the discussion of the role of narrative of mental illness forward." - Metapsychology "The number of scholarly books on depression is growing, perhaps because mood disorders are now so common, but Depression and Narrative is uncommonly interesting and insightful. Hilary Clark has assembled a volume that focuses on how writers attempt to describe anguish that is at times indescribable. Combining theoretical sophistication and close reading, the contributors cast much light on a dark subject." - Jeffrey Berman, author of Dying to Teach: A Memoir of Love, Loss, and Learning