Becoming Insomniac: How Sleeplessness Alarmed Modernity - Hardcover

Scrivner, L.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1137268735 ISBN 13: 9781137268730

Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014

Synopsis

A study of the history of modern insomnia, this book explores how poets, journalists, and doctors of the Victorian period found themselves in near-universal agreement that modernity and sleep were somehow incompatible. It investigates how psychologists, philosophers and literary artists worked to articulate its causes, and its potential cures.

About this title

From the Back Cover:

A global increase in insomnia is now being blamed on technologies that keep us perpetually "connected" - the Internet, social networking sites, and smartphones. Yet this phenomenon of technologized sleeplessness is not as new as we might think. Poets, journalists, and doctors of the Victorian period found themselves in near-universal agreement that modernity and sleep were becoming increasingly incompatible. They complained that the new, cutting edge technologies of their day - the telegraph, telephone, electric light, and railway - encroached upon the night and the mind to interrupt normal sleep cycles. This book provides a history of modern insomnia and shows how the modern world is essentially "Becoming Insomniac." It investigates what makes the sleepless condition so special - involving strange paradoxes of attention and volition - and reveals how psychologists, and literary artists of the Victorian period worked to articulate its phenomena, causes, and potential cures.

About the Author:

Lee Scrivner teaches in the Literature Department at American University in Washington, DC. Previously, he has taught English and the Humanities at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, USA; The University of London, Birkbeck, UK; and at Bogaziçi University in Istanbul, Turkey.

About this edition

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Publication date: 2014
• ISBN 10: 1137268735
• ISBN 13: 9781137268730
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 267