'Long grief, dark melancholy, hopeless natural love': Clarissa, Cheyne and narratives of body and soul.
The paper deals with Clarissa's wasting combination of love and religious melancholy, and the way in which ailments of the mind have an immediate effect on the body in this period. George Cheyne's theories of melancholy and hypochondria explain at least some of the mechanisms by which the eighteenth century understood this phenomenon. 'Clarissa' is an important text because it influenced so many later representations of melancholy, especially as it is gendered feminine in Richardson's newly feminised discourse of sensibility.
Lawlor
Clark
C
English Division, School of Arts and Social Sciences, University of Northumbria, Lipman Building, Newcastle upon Tyne NE1 8ST, UK. clark.lawlor@northumbria.ac.uk
D003866:Depressive Disorder / Q000266:history*; D004739:England; D005260:Female; D006117:Grief; D049669:History, 16th Century; D049670:History, 17th Century; D006801:Humans; D006998:Hypochondriasis / Q000266:history*; D008093:Literature, Modern / Q000266:history*; D008149:Love; D008513:Medicine in Literature; D012068:Religion and Medicine; D014397:Tuberculosis, Pulmonary