The Literature of Addiction

The Literature of Addiction

ENGL 854
Graduate
3 Units
In-person
6

According to Stuart Walton in Out of It (2002), some addicts commit suicide and others overdose. There is, however, a third group that manages to avoid both these fates and stay alive. Its members are 鈥渢he ones who may well go on to write abuse confessionals鈥, Walton adds, 鈥渁nd each is a distant descendant of De Quincey.鈥 This course examines De Quincey鈥檚 seminal narratives of drug addiction, including Confessions of an English Opium-Eater and its sequel, Suspiria de Profundis. It then explores the work of some of De Quincey鈥檚 major 鈥渄escendants鈥, including Edgar Allan Poe, Arthur Conan Doyle, Virginia Woolf, Malcolm Lowry, Aldous Huxley, and Carlyn Zwarenstein.