British Academy: The UK's National Academy for the Humanities and Social Sciences

MADNESS AND LITERATURE - FRIENDS OR FOES?

The 34th British Academy Conversazione

Professor Jonathan Bate, FBA
and Dr Adam Phillips

at the British Academy on Friday 22 February 2002

Speakers

Professor Jonathan Bate, FBA
Leverhulme Research Professor & King Alfred Professor,
University of Liverpool

A wide-ranging, informal conversation on the subject, between a literary scholar and a psychoanalyst who is also a literary critic. Professor Bate will begin by raising three issues:

1. The long history of the association between genius and madness, going back to the ancient idea of possession by the Muse. A tradition summed up by Dryden's "Great wits are sure to madness near allied / And thin partitions do their bounds divide." But also the counter-view summed up by Charles Lamb's essay "Sanity of True Genius".
2. Is there evidence that, compared with other professions, an unusually high percentage of creative artists suffer from manic depression? Recent research proposing a link between creativity and the genetic disposition towards depression.
3. A case-study: John Clare (whose biography Professor Bate is writing). Did his "madness" inspire or inhibit his poetry?

Dr Adam Phillips

I, too will begin by considering Lamb's essay Sanity of True Genius in order to discuss the difficulties of using madness as a description.

I will then talk about the anti-psychiatry of the 60s and 70s, and the consequences of the idealization of madness as of necessity, a creative experience.

I will conclude by talking about what people like talking about artists as mad. And why this is often a way of not attending to, or not describing, rather more interesting things about them.

Tea will be served at 4.45pm and the meeting will start at 5.15pm until 7.45pm, followed by a buffet supper. You are welcome to attend the meeting free of charge, and to bring guests. Graduate students are always welcome. All those attending are warmly encouraged to stay to supper afterwards, when there will be an opportunity to meet the speakers and continue discussion with other members of the company in an informal setting. (Supper, including wine, costs £11.00 per person).