May 2022 – According to the Arts

The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox

According to the art: A central concern of the novel is the role and operation of asylums in Western nations during most of the twentieth-century, with particular attention to how asylums affected the plights of women. The story is a literary representation of the period for asylums that corresponds with social historian Michel Foucault’s analysis in his book, Madness and Civilization.

Madness and Civilization:
A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason

What These Works Say

According to the art: Michel Foucault digs into the history of madness from the sixteenth century to the nineteenth century western Europe and the U.S. This period corresponds roughly from the time when “madmen were allowed to wander in the open countryside,” through a period of exclusionary practices, and until the “birth of the asylum.”