Melancholy and Genius – The Eighteenth-Century View of Creative Despair

In this episode of The Mad Genius Thesis Podcast, we examine Melancholy Experience in Literature of the Long Eighteenth Century, a fascinating exploration of how melancholy and depression were understood, represented, and treated before modern psychiatry. This collection of essays uncovers the fashionable side of melancholy, its philosophical and medical interpretations, and its deep connections to religion, gender, and class. We discuss how writers like Boswell, Shakespeare, and Gray portrayed sorrow, and whether the romanticization of melancholy shaped enduring myths about creativity and suffering. Did a shift in medical thinking contribute to modern misunderstandings of mental illness? Join us as we trace the historical roots of depression and its lasting impact on artistic identity.

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