Eluned Summers-Bremner

Kemal Atakay

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Uykusuzluk

This cultural, historical, and scientific exploration of sleeplessness by Eluned Summers-Bremner begins with the literature of ancient times, and finds its sufferers in prominent texts such as the Iliad, the Odyssey, the Mesopotamian epic Gilgamesh, and the Bible. Moving to Romantic and Gothic literature, she shows how sleeplessness continued to play a large role as the advent of street lighting in the nineteenth century inspired the fantastical blurring of daytime reality and night visions and authors connected insomnia to the ephemeral worlds of nightmares and the sublime. Meanwhile, throughout the ages insomnia has been variously categorized by the medical community as a manifestation of a deeper psychological or physical malady. Today’s medical solutions tend to involve prescription drugs—but, as Insomnia reveals, important questions linger about the role of the pharmaceutical industry and the effectiveness of such treatments. “Summers-Bremner’s account of literary usages of insomnia, from Gilgamesh to Garcia Márquez, is a rich one, sufficient to make the case that insomnia is a recurrent theme in Western culture.”––Wall Street Journal “A whimsical tour of the history of how different cultures have viewed not only insomnia but also the night itself, sleep, dreams, darkness, and activities that occur in the dark.”—New England Journal of Medicine “Summers-Bremner’s excellent account of insomnia shows that the consideration of our waking moments is indicative of the changing ways we think about life.”—Financial Times Magazine

A Cultural History

Insomnia

David Ellis

Gina Wisker

John Sears

Imelda Whelehan

Clare Hanson

Maroula Joannou

English Association

Felicity Rosslyn

Paulina Palmer

Essays illustrating the range and diversity of post-1970 British women writers.

Contemporary British Women Writers

Scott Brewster

The essays in this collection deal with contemporary Irish poetry and the question of the desiring body as a cultural and historical product, a biological entity and a psycho-sexual construction, and not least as an existential being. Drawing upon the literary theories of, among others, the French post-structuralists, the psychoanalytic theories of Lacan and Kristeva, the philosophies of Merleau-Ponty and Levinas, and feminist philosophers, such as Donna Haraway and Susan Bordo. The contributors explore how contemporary Irish poets, both male and female, give expression to what might be termed a reassessment of material experience. With their various approaches they address the various ways in which the body can be seen as an agent of empowerment and change in the work of Eavan Boland, Ciaran Carson, Mary Dorcey, Seamus Heaney, Rita Ann Higgins, Thomas Kinsella, Michael Longley, Derek Mahon, Medbh McGuckian, Paula Meehan, John Montague, Paul Muldoon, Eilean Ni Chuilleanain and Nuala Ni Dhomhnaill.

The Body and Desire in Contemporary Irish Poetry

Eluned Summers-Bremner

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