University/Organization
THE GRADUATE CENTER OF THE CITY UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK

Title
“THE DISORDER WAS IN HER MIND”: PSYCHOSOMATIC ILLNESS AS CONFESSION IN RICHARDSON’S CLARISSA

Synopsis
This paper explores the interplay between Richardson’s Clarissa and the contemporaneous medical paradigm. Clarissa’s self-imposed silence nourishes her fatal illness, challenging the 18th century medical view of the rational soul as a monolithic faculty and anticipating the psychoanalytic doctrine by depicting the heroine’s psychic conflict and proto-repression.

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