The Literature of Melancholia (PDF)

SABINE BLACKMORE Humboldt-Universität, Germany
TOBIAS DÖRING Professor of English Literature, LMU Munich, Germany
CHRISTOPH EHLAND, Professor of English Literature and Cultural Studies, University of Paderborn, Germany
ANNE ENDERWITZ Post-Doctoral Fellow, Friedrich Schlegel Graduate School for Literary Studies, Freie Universität Berlin, Germany
PETER FRITZSCHE Professor of History at the University of Illinois, USA
JOHAN GEERTSEMA National University of Singapore
ANDREW GIBSON Research Professor of Modern Literature and Theory, Royal Holloway, University of London, UK
PAUL GILROY Anthony Giddens Professor in Social Theory, London School of Economics and Political Sciences, UK
STEPHAN KOHL Professor Emeritus of English Cultures and Literature, University of Würzburg, Germany
GABRIELE RIPPL Professor of Literatures in English, University of Berne, Switzerland
JENNIFER RUTHERFORD Associate Professor in Sociology, University of Flinder, Austria
ELIZABETH SAKELLARIDOU Professor of Drama and Theatre Studies, Aristotle University, Thessaloniki, Greece
KIRSTEN SANDROCK Assistant Professor at the Department of English Literature and Cultural Studies, University of Göttingen, Germany
JULIANA SCHIESARI Professor of Italian and Comparative Literature, University of California, Davis, USA
FELIX C. H. SPRANG Assistant Professor of English Literature, University of Hamburg, Germany
PIETER VERMEULEN Postdoctoral Research Fellow with the Flemish Research Council (FWO), University of Ghent, Belgium
ANNE-JULIA ZWIERLEIN Professor of English Literary and Cultural Studies, University of Germany

'This book is an ambitious engagement with a major topic of psychological and cultural importance. Its aims are wide-ranging, covering key writers and topics between the early modern period and our own time. Using often sophisticated theoretical approaches, the contributors have important arguments to make both in terms of the historical analysis of melancholia and of melancholic texts and tendencies, and of the continuity between historical figures and objects and such present day preoccupations as depression, loss and nostalgia. The result is a rich mix of approaches and a convincingly nuanced series of distinctions in our experience and understanding of the merry and the melancholic.' - Allan Ingram, Professor of English, University of Northumbria, UK