Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-mlc7c Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-09T15:37:23.487Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Introduction: Sadness and Melancholy in German-Language Literature from the Seventeenth Century to the Present: An Overview

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 April 2013

Mary Cosgrove
Affiliation:
University of Edinburgh
Mary Cosgrove
Affiliation:
University of Edinburgh
Anna Richards
Affiliation:
Birkbeck College, University of London
Get access

Summary

SADNESS IS A COMMON HUMAN MOOD; its causes can be many and varied. At face value, it is a normal emotional response to challenging life experiences, such as the death of a loved one or the end of a meaningful relationship. Sadness is often considered pathological, however, if it arises without a clear and identifiable cause and lingers indefinitely as a negative mood that colors the individual's perception and experience of the world. From antiquity to the late nineteenth century, the common term for this pathological version of sadness was “melancholy” or “melancholia” and it was typically described in medical and cultural discourses as sadness with insufficient or no apparent cause. Developments in psychiatry throughout the nineteenth century witnessed the emergence of the term “depression,” which replaced “melancholy” and “melancholia” in medical discussions. Today the latter two terms barely feature in the influential Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM IV, 2000) of the American Psychiatric Association. No longer central to the field of medicine, “melancholy” now evokes, perhaps more one-sidedly than in earlier periods, a contemplative, even poetic mood of brooding introspection. However, this contemporary distinction between poetic and scientific versions of melancholy should not obscure the fact that, until nineteenth-century psychiatry turned from “melancholy” to the more specifically medical term “depression,” the man of letters viewed “melancholy” as both literary and medical.

Type
Chapter
Information
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer
Print publication year: 2012

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×