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Author Boon, Marcus.

Title The road of excess : a history of writers on drugs / Marcus Boon.

Publication Info. Cambridge, Mass. : Harvard University Press, 2002.

Item Status

Description 1 online resource (339 pages) : illustrations
Physical Medium polychrome
Description text file
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references (pages 279-302) and index.
Contents Prologue -- Addicted to nothingness : narcotics and literature -- Voice of the blood : anesthetics and literature -- Time of the assassins : cannabis and literature -- Induced life : stimulants and literature -- Imaginal realms : psychedelics and literature -- Epilogue.
Access Use copy Restrictions unspecified MiAaHDL
Summary From the antiquity of Homer to yesterday's Naked Lunch, writers have found inspiration, and readers have lost themselves, in a world of the imagination tinged and oftentimes transformed by drugs. The age-old association of literature and drugs receives its first comprehensive treatment in this far-reaching work. Drawing on history, science, biography, literary analysis, and ethnography, Marcus Boon shows that the concept of drugs is fundamentally interdisciplinary, and reveals how different sets of connections between disciplines configure each drug's unique history. In chapters on opiates, anesthetics, cannabis, stimulants, and psychedelics, Boon traces the history of the relationship between writers and specific drugs, and between these drugs and literary and philosophical traditions. With reference to the usual suspects from De Quincey to Freud to Irvine Welsh and with revelations about others such as Milton, Voltaire, Thoreau, and Sartre, The Road of Excess provides a novel and persuasive characterization of the "effects" of each class of drug--linking narcotic addiction to Gnostic spirituality, stimulant use to writing machines, anesthesia to transcendental philosophy, and psychedelics to the problem of the imaginary itself. Creating a vast network of texts, personalities, and chemicals, the book reveals the ways in which minute shifts among these elements have resulted in "drugs" and "literature" as we conceive of them today.
Reproduction Electronic reproduction. [S.l.] : HathiTrust Digital Library, 2010. MiAaHDL
System Details Master and use copy. Digital master created according to Benchmark for Faithful Digital Reproductions of Monographs and Serials, Version 1. Digital Library Federation, December 2002. http://purl.oclc.org/DLF/benchrepro0212 MiAaHDL
Processing Action digitized 2010 HathiTrust Digital Library committed to preserve MiAaHDL
Local Note eBooks on EBSCOhost EBSCO eBook Subscription Academic Collection - North America
Subject Drugs in literature.
Drugs in literature.
Authors -- Drug use.
Authors -- Drug use.
Authors.
Literature, Modern -- History and criticism.
Literature, Modern.
Genre/Form Electronic books.
Criticism, interpretation, etc.
Electronic books.
Other Form: Print version: Boon, Marcus. Road of excess. Cambridge, Mass. : Harvard University Press, 2002 0674009142 9780674009141 (DLC) 2002068522 (OCoLC)50006579
ISBN 9780674028517 (electronic book)
0674028511 (electronic book)
9780674009141
0674009142 (hardcover ; alkaline paper)