Through an analysis of stories of madness in fiction and memoir, Burwell investigates the following questions: In what ways does madness speak itself in narrative, and what possibilities and constraints frame the voices of mad people? When people speak for and of mad people, what do they say, and is it empowering or disempowering? What systemic structures and societal assumptions inform broader discourses around madness? How are issues of race, class, gender, ethnicity, age expressed in stories of madness? Burwell uses the tools of literary criticism, with its attention to narrative form, types of narrators, characterization, genre, and theme, to explore the forms that madness takes in stories as well as the limitations and potential of narratives in general to represent madness. Focusing on the interaction between literature and madness, Burwell considers both how the structures of stories within and beyond literature accommodate themselves to the representation of madness, and how representations of forms of madness accommodate themselves to the forms that stories can take.
