MIT Libraries logoDSpace@MIT

MIT
View Item 
  • DSpace@MIT Home
  • MIT Open Access Articles
  • MIT Open Access Articles
  • View Item
  • DSpace@MIT Home
  • MIT Open Access Articles
  • MIT Open Access Articles
  • View Item
JavaScript is disabled for your browser. Some features of this site may not work without it.

Strange power of speech

Author(s)
Jackson, Noel B.
Thumbnail
DownloadLancet essay draft.pdf (24.08Kb)
OPEN_ACCESS_POLICY

Open Access Policy

Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike

Terms of use
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/
Metadata
Show full item record
Abstract
A friend in graduate school once told me that whenever she was particularly moved by a poem or novel she would hurl the book she was reading across the room. The most recent book to have met this fate was Charles Dickens's Hard Times. The culminating chapter of this volume ends, appropriately enough, with a thud: in the chapter entitled “Down”, Dickens brings the novel to its deepest point of crisis when Louisa collapses in a heap at the feet of her father, Thomas Gradgrind, who sees with horror “the pride of his heart and the triumph of his system, lying, an insensible heap, at his feet.” My friend's habit struck me as a bizarre way of responding to moments of terrific beauty in literary works of art. But hers is by no means the oddest account of the imagination's power to affect our minds and bodies.
Date issued
2009-10
URI
http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/51727
Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Humanities. Literature Section
Journal
Lancet
Publisher
Elsevier
Citation
Jackson, Noel. “Strange power of speech.” The Lancet 374.9700 (2009): 1494-1495.
Version: Original manuscript
ISSN
0023-7507

Collections
  • MIT Open Access Articles

Browse

All of DSpaceCommunities & CollectionsBy Issue DateAuthorsTitlesSubjectsThis CollectionBy Issue DateAuthorsTitlesSubjects

My Account

Login

Statistics

OA StatisticsStatistics by CountryStatistics by Department
MIT Libraries
PrivacyPermissionsAccessibilityContact us
MIT
Content created by the MIT Libraries, CC BY-NC unless otherwise noted. Notify us about copyright concerns.