Addiction Literature's Past and Present

Addiction Literature's Past and Present aims to realign consideration of addiction as a transhistorical and transcultural aspect of the human condition. This book illuminates the premodern roots of the linguistic and narrative materials of addiction discourse and argues for Addiction Literature to be considered as a distinct literary phenomenon, with a history stretching back to Antiquity. Addiction, as it is understood in this book, exists at the intersection between appetite, habit and impaired personal behavioural agency. This book begins by exploring the ways in which we articulate the experience (both lived and observed) of addiction today, uncovering a core set of conceptual components and discursive tropes which are commonly associated with modern understandings of the phenomenon. Having established a common set of tropes and features which distinguish modern Addiction Literature as a distinct literary mode, it then considers premodern texts through this lens, revealing similar patterns of conception and convention in a broad range of historical periods and literary genres from Aesop to Shakespeare.