Melancholy Archives | National Humanities Center

Melancholy

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Coleridge’s Melancholia: An Anatomy of Limbo

By Eric G. Wilson (NHC Fellow, 2003–04) This lively intellectual biography of the second half of Coleridge's life argues that the poet, in his mature work, reveals a brilliant though troubled genius for conveying the ambiguities of psychological limbo. Asserting that the later poetry is the key element of Coleridge's career, Eric G. Wilson proposes … Continued

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Hearts of Darkness: Wellsprings of a Southern Literary Tradition

By Bertram Wyatt-Brown (NHC Fellow, 1989–90; 1998–99) From Edgar Allan Poe’s “dark forebodings” to Kate Chopin’s lifelong struggle with sorrow and loss, depression has shadowed southern letters. This beautifully realized study explores the defining role of melancholy in southern literature from the early nineteenth century to the early twentieth, when it evolved into modernist alienation. … Continued

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The Melancholy Android: On the Psychology of Sacred Machines

By Eric G. Wilson (NHC Fellow, 2003–04) The Melancholy Android is a psychological study of the impulses behind the creation of androids. Exploring three imaginative figures—the mummy, the golem, and the automaton—and their appearances in myth, religion, literature, and film, Eric G. Wilson tracks the development of android-building and examines the lure of artificial doubles untroubled … Continued