Acute Melancholia

Abstract

Before melancholy, gratitude. First to Elizabeth and Ernest Monrad, for their countless gifts to Harvard University and, today in particular, to the Divinity School. It is a great honor to hold the Elizabeth H. Monrad Chair in Christian Studies and I hope I can do so in ways that at least partially reflect the grace and generosity of the chair's namesake and of its donors. My gratitude to Bill Graham, Dean of the Divinity School, is enormous, both for his professional confidence in me and for his persistent and inspiring vision of what Harvard Divinity School is and can be. It is wonderful to be here and for that I thank my colleagues—the faculty, administration, staff, and students of HDS. And finally, for helping me think through this particular bit of work, special thanks to Constance Furey, Stephanie Paulsell, and Melissa Zeiger.

"Slayn for Goddys lofe": Margery Kempe's Melancholia and the Bleeding of Tears

“…Melancholia here feeds melancholia rather than allaying it-the death of the other leads to the idealization of and desire for one' s own death." 27 For Kempe, however, this is only partly true, as her ambivalence towards her own death will show. While her tears function as boystows intrusions to her community at large, they also signify a melancholic woman who is simultaneously reliant on and distraught at the most devastating image of Christian narrative, unable to accept or relinquish it and so forced, like an "open wound," to bleed her tears of lamentation.…”

“I WALK WEEPING IN PANGS OF A MOTHERS TORMENT FOR HER CHILDREN”: Women's Laments in the Poetry and Prophecies of William Blake

“…Lament can kill. As Amy Hollywood has observed, with painful autobiographical witness, “acute melancholia” can be a cause of death, and perhaps a not so uncommon one (2006).…”

“…I am indebted to Amy Hollywood for the Derrida and Zeiger references. See Hollywood 2002, 335–56; 2006. Finally, see also Nussbaum's insightful and moving discussion of “helplessness” and endless grief inscribed into the musical textures of Gustav Mahler's Kinderototenlieder in Nussbaum 2001, 248–94.…”

The Object of His Heart: Subjectivity and Affect in Mystic Texts

“…These texts act as emotional scripts that play a crucial role in the cultivation and substantiation of desired emotions. And finally, Amy Hollywood takes the study of emotion in a slightly different direction in her article Acute Melancholia where she traces the genealogy of melancholic lovesickness. Hollywood connects the dots between how lovesickness shifted from a physical illness to an emotional disposition associated with melancholy and finally became linked to the mystic's expression of ecstatic union .…”