Episode 118: You Fancy Me Mad - Renfield, Lear and Ophelia: Madness in Speculative Fiction

 

It's Mental Health Awareness Week and as usual the dragons are coming at the subject from a slightly different angle. Fiction has - not to put it indelicately - misunderstood, misrepresented and often exploited mental illness. SFF authors Jules and Madeleine delve back into the origins of this rather toxic trope in gothic fiction. Just why was 'madness' such a popular component of the gothic novel? What was the relationship between madness and nature? And where did this chain of association begin? On the slab this week - Frankenstein - Mary Shelley. Dracual. Bram Stoker, The Moonstone and The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins, Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte, Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte and of course, Edgar Allen Poe.

 

Title music: Ecstasy by Smiling Cynic