Narrating Neurons: Perspectives on Mental Illness in American and British Novels in the Age of Neuroscience

The aim of this dissertation project is to analyse representations of mental illness in recent American and British novels, thus investigating the relationship between cultural and scientific conceptualisa-tions of ‘illness’, ‘mind’, ‘consciousness’ and ‘identity’. In recent decades, advances in neuroscientific research have had an increasing influence on perceptions and representations of psychological condi-tions. Since mental disorders have the ability to challenge identity on the level of consciousness itself, narratives centred on mental illness have to negotiate personal experience with an imagined outer reality and increasingly influential biomedical explanations of the workings of the human mind. This project therefore studies the way in which the narrative and the language of novels centred on mental illness interact with and challenge neuroscientific and medical discourses to construct identity and defend personal experience against cultural and scientific preconceptions. In the analysis of the texts, a mix of theoretical frameworks and methods, including narratology, stylistics and cognitive poetics, are used to trace different aspects of representation. While the study focuses on the treatment of concepts of ‘mind’, ‘consciousness’ and ‘identity’ in literary depictions of mental illness, it also dis-cusses the cultural implications of the concept of ‘illness’ in relation to the human psyche. Thus, the project endeavours to add a further perspective to ongoing cultural debates on mental health, aligning itself with efforts undertaken in the field of the medical humanities.