Romanticism in American Literature

Tennyson, in The Princess describes, under the diagnosis of ca chroniclepsy, probable temporal lobe epileptic dreamy rural beas with declension which serve as a adapter of sexual and moral ambivalence, the poems central theme. It come outs that Tennyson knew such(prenominal) seizures from his own preceptor who had been given a diagnosis of catalepsy. Poe gave his Bernice in the novella of the equivalent title a diagnosis of epilepsy as a reason for a premature burial.However, at that place was a good deal of unlikelihood in this, and when he came to this theme in The feed of the Ho character of Usher and in The Premature Burial he chose instead a diagnosis of catalepsy which fitted split with the plot. The fits of the title character in George Elites S mischievouslys trend, ignored as catalepsy, would today rather be seen as epileptic twilight states. It would seem that this author drew from contemporary dictionary descriptions which described conditions similar to vogue s fits under the pass of catalepsy.In Elites legend with a practical(prenominal) treatment, the twilight states be a central factor in the plot and explain Manners reclusion and passivity. In Poor discharge Finch by English realist Willie Collins, the postgraduates seizures of Oscar, unrivaled of the main characters, their cause, their treatment with silver grey nitrate, and the subsequent disconsolation of his kin are central supporting elements of a perfectly constructed plot. Collins gives an diminutive description of a right aversive seizure with stand byary generalization, and how to deal with it.In none of these works seizures are seen in a negative light. They rather give the axe reactions of charity and support. Keywords Anglo-Ameri put forward literature, affection in fiction, romanticism, realism, Tennyson, Poe, George Eliot, Willie Collins. INTRODUCTION The romantics were fascinated by un prevalent behavior and exceptional psychic phenomena. Psychiatric unwell ness was threatening and unexplored UT also had the attraction of the morbid and was a poetic treasure chest.For the literature in the realistic period, illness remained an important theme in general because the disastrous sides of life were non to be neglected, and we can thank the great English realists for some prison toll being the starting cartridge holder to give us De- tailed descriptions of pathological conditions, such as developmental dyslexia in two Bleak House Jacob, 1992). For this reason it is non surprising to find epilepsy represented in literature written in the affectionateness of the nineteenth century. Here we also meet the margin catalepsy and a relationship amidst the two diagnoses warrants our examination.Address correspondence to Peter Wolf, Plenipotentiary Bethel, Kline Mar l, Marriage 21, D 33617 Believed, Germany. give out +49-521-1443686. Fax +49-521-1444637. E-mail panorama. De. EPILEPSY & CATALEPSY IN ANGLO-AMERICAN LITERATURE 287 ALFRED TEN NYSON THE PRINCESS Alfred Tennyson (1808-1892) was one of the main literary figures in the middle of the last century in England. The pair of terms seizures and catalepsy in his Princess (1847-1851), a long narrative poem, has gently been pursued by an American philologist, Barbara Herb Wright (1987), who is married to a neurologist. The Princess commencement ceremony appeared in 1847, and in a reworked second edition in 1848. In the third edition in 1850, six songs were added among each of the chapters and in the four-spotth edition Weird seizures are mentioned for the first time provided then as an essential element of the composition. The literary studies dispute about this elements artistic value and function, as well as the authors refusal to exposition on the question, has been depicted in exposit by Ms Wright. Tennyson called his work a medley.The structure is multifaceted, and it has allegorical, discursive and ironic elements. The accounting uses the story-in-story t echnique. On the first level, the story narrator and a group of buster students visit the castle of one of the students. The student comes from a very old family and has rig an ancestor in his family tree, a lady who, miracle of noble womanhood (p. 154), has defended the fortress in full armor and weapons against its foes. At a garden party Lila, his relay transmitters sister appears, half child, half woman (p. 55 the half ND half motif, the inebriate is a basic motif of this work), and decorates the statue of a warlike ancestor with her head scarf and silk stole while talking about womens oppressiveness and the founding of a radical Amazon state. In the next s notwithstanding chapters the s stock-still students tell the story of such a community The prince and princess of two a stillting kingdoms stick been engaged to marry since their childhood. When the father of the prince sends for the b crucify-to-be with pomp and presents, her father writes a letter saying she wants to live alone with her women, and not wed.When the elderly king, father of the prince, hears this, he wants to declare war but the prince bunchs off to clear up the situation himself. Two friends accompany him, also to help him in the event that he should sire seizures. The seizures are the result of a curse on his family, laid on them long ago by a man who a motive ancestor had burned as a sorcerer because he cast no shadow none of their blood should know the shadow from the substance, image from reality, and one should come to fight with shadows and to fall (p. 1 57).For this reason Waking dreams were an old and strange affection of the house (p. 57), and the curse manifests itself in the prince as Weird seizures (p. 157) which are marked with deterioration experiences. The prince hears from the princess gentle, peace-loving father that she has withdrawn to their summer castle, founded a womens university and now holds a purely female court no male being may reach the area under penalty of death. But the prince and his friends dress up as girls and go there. They are discovered and have to flee.The fact that the prince has saved the princess from drowning does not help. During this time period the prince has two seizures without the princess noticing. The first happens at their second meeting when he is overwhelmed by her royal appearance, her foot on a tame leopard, before they ride out together. During their excursion his love, previously unnoticed, blossoms. The second seizure happens when he lets himself be despicably thrown out by her, even though he not only saved her life, but is also convinced by and willing to accept the equal rights of women.Both times the princess appears to him as a shadow in his seizures, whereas early(a)wise he admires her for her uncompromising consistency and loves her because she sticks to her cause in a more straightforward manner than early(a)s. War is declared, the prince and one of the princess associates defending the princess fight against each other along with 50 of the best knights on both sides. The prince remembers the prophecy that one of his family will fight against shadows, gets a seizure, and goes into battle although he is still in a dreamy state. He and his group of men lose the battle.He is seriously injured, and experiences his long recuperation period as a continuation of the seizure. After clearly loving the war, the princess becomes less rigorous in her attitude and takes care of the 288 PETER WOLF prince and all of the other injured on both sides. The prince and princess forgive each other and the question of dream or reality, shadow or substance, becomes a question about who the princess in truth is, what her essence is. Is it the masculine unwillingness to compromise with which she tries to demonstrate her grounds or rather the other side, which allows for feelings of pity, gratitude, love, and duty?As this is decided, the princes seizures cease and he changes into a s tronger, more masculine person. He can convince the princess that her holding a purely female court was not right for her, not genuine, only a copy of the male world. The prince and princess, until then both a cross between male and female, discover one another. They also both find their own selves in the recognition that man and woman remain incomplete, only half of a whole, as long as each attempts to be whole alone, or as long as one sees the other as the dominate or superior one.The court physician diagnosed the princes seizures as catalepsy (p. 1 57). We now know that Tennyson used, or at least owned, Quinsys medical dictionary of 1804 (Wright, 1987)), which defined catalepsy as a sudden suppression of movement and perception where the DOD is immobilizers (freezes) in its present position. This comes in seizures, lasts a few minutes, seldom up to a few hours, and at the end the patients do not remember anything that has happened during the seizure. It is as if they awake from s leep (Wright, 1987).Interestingly enough, the princes seizures are described completely differently Others notice nothing, he even fights in a battle during a seizure. Only his perception is altered. This change in perception usually only lasts for a short time. It seems to him as if he is border by ghosts and he himself only a shadow of a dream. The princess appears to him as an incomplete sketch, her leopards as a fantastic painting, other people as unload masks. Things are present and not present at the same time, a barb Just experienced happened and at the same time did not happen.He is unavailing to tell the difference between reality and illusion. Ms. Wright (1987) was the first to suggest that epileptic seizures were being described here and she is without doubt correct These are focal seizures of the temporal lobe with illusionary experiences of De-realization and diversification a type of seizure that was underscored in medicine at Tennyson time. How did Tennyson know about them? There were several cases of epilepsy in his immediate family, for compositors case his father, as can be seen by a letter describing his situation which fits the diagnosis of temporal lobe epilepsy.We also know that sterilizes told the family that his seizures were catalepsy rather than epilepsy (Wright, 1987). This could have been intended to relieve the family or make the diagnosis sound less threatening. On the other hand, it is also un cognize how clearly a distinction between the terms catalepsy and epilepsy was do in the early nineteenth century (Teeming, 1971)1. Trances also play a securing role in the rest of Tennyson work, and it is well known that he often set himself into trances by repeating his own name.But the description of the subjective seizure experiences in the Princess, whose origin and terminology seem to be explained by Wright, stands alone, and the seizures have their special literary feel as metaphor for the indecision and insecurity that lea ds to the main theme of the story. EDGAR ALLAN POE BERNICE, THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF USHER AND THE PREMATURE BURIAL The possibility that Poe was also a model for Tennyson and the use of catalepsy as a motif in his writings cannot be excluded.Tennyson was deeply affected by Poe, admired him, and offerd substantially to the literary credence of the American in England in nineteenth century something not to be taken for granted. (The 1 . Something similar may have been true, in the public mind, for the terms epilepsy and apoplexy. Thacker in Inanity Fair seems once to have mixed them up (Wolf, 1995), and simple-minded Joe Gagger, in Dickens Great Expectations says his father went off in a olympian elliptic fit, obviously meaning apoplectic. 289 other way around, Popes lyric was influenced by Tennyson. Poe created a figure with he diagnosis of epilepsy, Bernice, in the story carrying her name in 1835. The story belongs to a group of dismal fatalistic novellas, and he needs a progre ssive physical and mental illness for Bernice, which would also make it slick for her to appear dead. The story is told in the first person from the point of view of Usages. Usages lives in a lonely mansion with his beautiful cousin Bernice. Bernice has a species of epilepsy not infrequently terminating in trance itself trance very nearly resembling positive dissolution (p. 172).In a reversal and projection that is not typical for Poe, Usages does not explain these trances but rather his own, which are trances or daydreams induced by concentrating on coincidental objects or meditation on trivial words. Bernice and Usages become engaged. In the progression of her disease Bernice loses her beauty. One day in her altered condition she silently stands in front of him. In an unexpected smile of peculiar meaning her splendid unclouded teeth which have remained perfect are exposed and their overleaf image becomes the focus of a monomania, a daydream of his lasting several days.During th is time he is vaguely aware that she has seizures one ironing. In the evening she appears to be dead and so is buried. His state of trance continues. Finally, he awakens out of his trance with a blighted feeling, a vague recollection of a deed, of the shrill cry of a womans voice. He learns from a menial who is wild with terror that Princes grave has been violated, and that she has been found in her grave still alive There is a spade leaning on the wall next to him.As he opens a little box that he finds on his table without knowing how it got there, dental surgery instruments fall out together with thirty-two small, white, and ivory-looking substances (p. 77). Behind the similarity of Usages and Tennyson self-induced daydreams and trances no hidden allusions should be suspected. These things are a part of the type of psychic experiments that the romantics were enthusiastic about. Nevertheless, the affinity in motif and the relationship to epilepsy that both authors created are wor thy of being mentioned.Poe must have noticed that it was unlikely for someone known to have epilepsy to have seizures in a familiar environment in the morning and on the same evening to be declared dead and buried. He prepares the reader by mentioning some pages fore that Bernice, in most cases, recovered from her seizures surprisingly rapidly, but the construction the Great Compromiser dubious. Perhaps this is the reason he gives Madeline of Usher another diagnosis to allow her to be mistakenly buried alive a few years later(prenominal) in The Fall of the House of Usher . She has transient affections of a partially cataleptic character (p. 82), and this leaves more room for the unlikely. Madeline appears only once before her apparent death. The narrator, a friend of her brother Redbrick, talks about her appearance she passed through a remote portion of the apartment, and, without having noticed my presence, disappeared (p. 182). She is not described in more detail (unusual for P oe) foremost is the feeling her appearance leaves in the narrator and her brother observing her A sensation of stupor oppressed me as my eyes followed her retreating steps (p. 182). Her appearance causes her brother to sorrowfully bury his face in his men.Later they lay her in her coffin although there still is a faint blush upon the bosom and the face, as usual in all maladies of strictly cataleptic character (p. 186). In spite of the improbability, Madeline manages to fight her way out of the coffin, and presents herself in silent reproach to her brother who must have suspected she had not really been dead. Poe must have been virtually obsessed with the idea of being buried alive It plays an important role, for example, in the early tale Algeria, and later became a theme in a own story with the title The Premature Burial.This begins with reports about actual live burials and leads to describing the fear associated with wake up in a coffin after being buried. The narrator, who be lieves that such things happen more often Han people suspect, tells his own story of being ill with increasingly frequent and long cataleptic seizures, trances, semi-syncope, and 290 his growing fear that he will be buried in such a state. He takes wide organizational precautions to prevent such an incident, but it does not calm him in the least.He talks about a further symptom, a disassociated awakening with very backward reorientation, preparing the scene for a cathartic experience ending the entire terrible episode He awakens one day in a sloshed woody chamber in total darkness with the smell of damp earth around him, and experiences the real horror of being ride alive. He remembers that he had been on a hunting excursion when a storm arose and that he fled to a barge laden with garden McCollum and went to sleep in a very tight berth.Now he can shake away his fear and he also loses the catalepsy which had perhaps been less the cause than the consequence of his fears (p. 271) . Here the construction of the disease accounting especially with the final considerations is really convincing. Nevertheless, this tale is one of Popes less familiar stories and literally not fully satisfying due to the approximate balance between reported facts ND fiction being only loosely connected.Poe apparently did not use Quince for his catalepsy motif, but another source, since his descriptions are completely different. They seem to be based on a tradition that Could and Pyle (1896) summarize Catalepsy, trance and lethargy, lasting for days or weeks, are really examples of spontaneously developed hypnotic sleep in hysteric patients or subjects of incipient insanity. It is in this condition that the lay Journals find argument for their stories of premature burial.GEORGE ELIOT SILLS MANNER In contrast, it seems that George Eliot (pseudonym or bloody shame Ann Evans, 1819-1880) also used Quinsys Medical Dictionary or a similar source to describe the seizures of the title fi gure in Sills Manner (1861), because her description corresponds very much more exactly to Quinsys definition than Tennyson. In Sills Manner the seizures of the title figure, a poor linen weaver, are an important structural element of the story. They are conditions that can last from a few minutes to an hour or more, and which are described in the book as trance or cataleptic seizures.When Manner has such a seizure he falls into an unconscious and snootiness stiffness with an empty look in his eyes. The seizures leave him with amnesia and Manner is not even aware of having had a seizure. At first, his community, a narrow religious sect, the middle point and content of Manners life, where he is respected for his faith and exemplary life style, get a line the seizures as a mark of his being specially chosen by God, as visitations of divine origin.But as the man who Manner thinks of as his best friend becomes his rival, he uses Manners seizures to discredit him in the community by in dicating his seizures might also have satanic origins (p. 0). Furthermore, he deals a devastating blow by blaming Manner for a theft that occurs during a death wake when Manner is in a trance. Manner is exiled and emigrates to a faraway region where he sets up his twine loom in a hut at the edge of the village (up. 11-15). There he lives a secluded hermit-like existence for 15 years.Despairing of God and his fellow man, he only thinks of his work and of his treasure of gold, sovereigns, that he has managed to scrape together by living so frugally. In this village he is also known for having fits and this contributes to his role as an outsider. When Manner leaves his hut on an errand one stormy evening, someone steals his treasure, leaving him empty-handed for the second time. But in contrast to the first time, he becomes integrated into the community because the members have pity on him (p. 03). Then a third event happens, when he is in a twilight state which falls over him while s tanding in the open door of his hut When he awakens from the trance he perceives a vague, golden shimmer in his hut that he at first believes must be the expected return of his gold coins but it is the golden hair of a little strip girl who has sought shelter in 91 the hut (p. 1 51). He accepts the child and raises her with the help of a neighbor and a happy time starts now and lasts into his old gage.The treasure is also found again. It is discovered and the reader is told this early in the story that the father of the child and the thief are the same person. All these motifs are woven together in a very complex manner and build into an artful design interwoven with the golden weave that make a legend. In a letter to her publisher, John Blackfoot, George Eliot characterized the work as a sort of legendary tale which she became inclined to give a more realistic treatment (Karl, 1995).The disease is of utmost importance in explaining the necessary static and passivity of the titl e figure which would normally be unnatural. It also allows for unexplainable events to happen which contribute to the storys legendary quality. Sills Manner is one of the most perfect of the literary works in which an epileptic disease is an essential stylistic element. Today we use the term catalepsy to describe a condition of motionless rigidity which can occasionally be observed over a longer period of time with androgenic psychosis or with severe life-threatening brain diseases.The seizures with impairment of consciousness from which Sills Manner suffered would today no longer be classified as catalepsy but as twilight states, and epilepsy would primarily be considered the cause. A recent biographer of Eliot (Karl, 1995) talks about Manners epileptic fits as a matter of course. It seems as though Eliot did not use direct observation in describing catalepsy but relied on the lexicographic definition. This included certain epileptic phenomena and catalepsy and epilepsy were probab ly not strictly separated at that time.Earlier, catalepsy had even been considered a variant of epilepsy (Teeming, 1971). AS we have seen in the case of Tennyson, catalepsy may sometimes have been used as a euphemism for epilepsy (see above). WILLIE COLLINS POOR turn a loss FINCH Willie colitis (1824-1889), a mend of Charles Dickens, is considered together with Dickens and George Eliot to be one of the great English realists of the nineteenth century. His Poor Miss Finch (1872) is one of the books in which epilepsy plays a key role in the construction of the plot. Oscar loves the beautiful, capricious, and artifice Lucille who also loves him.His twin brother, the ruthless Nugent tries to be his rival. Their voices are indistinguishable and they have he same features to someone who looks at them or commovees them. An eye specialist appears on the scene who is able to make Lucille see by operating on her. Like some blind people, Lucille can imagine colors, loves everything light an d hates everything dark. This almost leads the bad Nugent to succeed because he argues that when Lucille will see Oscar she is sure to despise him His skin is disclosure to a achromatic blue as a result of the treatment of his epilepsy with silver nitrate (p. 3). Oscar fears the day she will be able to see him but argues nevertheless unselfishly and generously for the controversial operation. Lucille then reacts completely different than expected and there is a happy end. In this novel Collins was particularly interested in the discoveries that had been made throughout the 18th and 19th century about what people born blind or who became blind in early childhood could sense or experience and how, after successful operation on their eyes, they reacted and learned to create a visual environment.These reports deal extensively with theories about the conception of berth and the construction of visual space, and with Molybdenums problem, whether a congenitally blind person who had learn ed to extinguish and name forms like a sphere and a cube by touch would be able to distinguish and identify these forms visually if the faculty of sight was recovered (v. Sender, 1960). Collins was more interested in the sys- 2.The village doctor who has been called to the scene is mildly made fun of by the author the sages of the village urge Manner strongly to smoke a pipe as a workout good for the fits and this advice was sanctioned by Dry. Kimball, on the ground that it was as well to try what could do no harm a principle which was made to reaction for a great deal of work in that gentlemans medical practice (p. 91). Manner follows this advice faithfully even though he actually dislikes tobacco and it doesnt really help. 92 ecological and moral responses of his characters to such an event. His description of the tests and tasks that are given his heroine by her doctor shows that he conducted thorough research for the story. Likewise, the epilepsy is not Just there but the res ult of a brain trauma (p. 68) from a robbery which has its own function in the carefully constructed story. In order to make the blackening of the skin more credible people with the same coloring appear marginally twice in the story (up. 3,269). Is that exaggerated? Apparently not.The treatment of epilepsy with silver nitrate was very common until the middle of the nineteenth century. One of the affected in Collins book says there are hundreds of people disclosure as I am, in the various parts of the civilized world (p. 84), and the English neurologist Todd complained that so many patients showed in the disconsolation of their faces the indelible marks of the ineffective treatment they had undergone (Teeming, 1971). Collins thinks better of Oscar and allows the treatment to be successful His epilepsy is cured (p. 0). CONCLUSIONS Four authors from two consecutive epochs of literature in the English language gave four completely different pictures of illness In Poe, the romanticist, t he epileptic and cataleptic conditions are more conjured up than described, whereas not the seizures themselves but the motif of a slow physical and mental deterioration are a point of focus. The epileptic and cataleptic states are essential elements to the gloomy mood that seem to drive these stories into inevitable fatalistic catastrophes.Tennyson depicts subjective perception of seizures and has resalable found an authentic source so that we can correct the diagnosis of catalepsy. Eliot probably followed a lexicographic definition for her description of cataleptic semi-conscious or trance states fairly exactly, but this definition subsumes symptoms of a condition which would nowadays be classified as epilepsy. Collins is furthest away from Poe. He virtually gives us a clinical case study with a matter-of- fact description of a seizure which begins with a wrenching aversive movement towards the right and the calm attitude of the doctor mastering the situation at hand.The diagnosis is given n a short and concise sentence, the etiology and therapy are a part of the case register in this realistic novel. Whereas with the earlier authors the distinction between epilepsy and catalepsy appears somewhat blurred, which may be typical for the time, Collins description of (post-traumatic) epilepsy and a focal seizure is fully correct. These four significant authors from the middle of the nineteenth century also handle the function of the seizures in the structure of their works very differently. Poe uses seizures as a reason for the suppositional death and subsequent live burial.Tennyson uses De-realization during seizures as a metaphor for his basic motif of half and half, and for the indecision in the main characters. Once these are overcome, the seizures disappear. In Elites work, the occurrence of recurring seizures is necessary for the plot of the story, they are an important element for the legendary aspect and a reason for Sills Manners timidity and resolutio n to fate. For Collins, who like Dickens laid special value on clean construction in his books, Scars epilepsy is a central supporting element which combines many associations in a perfectly structured story.In none of the authors works are the seizures indifferent, a mere curiosity or spectacle. Nor are they seen in a negative light. They rather evoke reactions of support, and sympathy with 3. A frightful contortion fastened itself on Scars face. His eyes turned up hideously. From his head to foot his whole body was wrenched round, as if giant hands had twisted it, towards the right. Before I could speak, he was in convulsions on the floor at his doctors feet. Good God, what is this I cried out. The doctor loosened his cravat, and moved away the article of furniture that was near him.