Theaters of madness : insane asylums and nineteenth-century American culture / Benjamin Reiss.

Chicago : University of Chicago Press, 2008.

xi, 237 pages : illustrations ; 23 cm

Includes bibliographical references (p. [199]-229) and index.

Introduction: sanative culture -- Brothers and sisters of asylumia: literary life in the New York State Lunatic Asylum -- Saneface minstrelsy: blacking up in the asylum -- Bardolatry in Bedlam: Shakespeare and early psychiatry -- Emerson's close encounters with madness -- What's the point of a revolution?: Edgar Allan Poe and the origins of the asylum -- Out of the attic: gender, captivity, and asylum exposés.