Aesthetic Hysteria
The Great Neurosis in Victorian Melodrama and Contemporary Fiction

Aesthetic Hysteria is a deconstructive psychoanalytic study of hysteria, using literary texts to foreground a telling encounter between two growing discourses within English studies: that of emotion/affect and trauma studies. It brings together several academic foci - the history of medicine, aesthetic theory, speech act theory, feminism, and gender and performance studies. The study uses its theoretical and philosophical questioning of a cultural phenomenon to interrogate the politics and ends of theory, and is timely in addressing similar anxieties dominating contemporary critical and cultural theory.

Preface
Acknowledgments
Chapter One: Introduction: "Stuck in the Gullet of the Signifier": Desire, Disgust, and the Aesthetics of Hysteria
Chapter Two: Too Much, Too Little: The Emotional Capital of Victorian Melodrama
Chapter Three: "Missed Encounters": Repetition, Rewriting, and Contemporary Returns to Charles Dickens's Great Expectations
Chapter Four: Broken English: Neurosis and Narration in Pat Barker's Regeneration Trilogy
Chapter Five: Emetic Theory: Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
Index