Date of Award
Spring 5-2022
Document Type
Honors Thesis
Degree Name
Bachelor of Arts
Department
Art & Art History
Advisor/Committee Chair
Sarah Cohen
Abstract
Throughout the eighteenth century, hysteria and melancholia were two of the most diagnosed nervous disorders in Europe. Ambiguities in diagnosis and language frame the development of hysteria as a primarily feminine disease, with its male counterpart as hypochondria or melancholia. However, medicine and society worked to inform and reflect each other, creating a visual culture of art, performance, and entertainment surrounding these nervous disorders. William Hogarth’s A Rake’s Progress (c. 1732-5) and Henry Fuseli’s The Nightmare (1781) exemplify the fluidity between medicine and society in eighteenth-century Britain.
Recommended Citation
Ross, Kayleigh, "The Performance of a Social Disease: Hysteria and Melancholia in Eighteenth-Century Britain through William Hogarth's A Rake's Progress (c. 1732-5) and Henry Fuseli's The Nightmare (1781)" (2022). Art & Art History. 5.
https://scholarsarchive.library.albany.edu/honorscollege_finearts/5