They take us by surprise, these tall perennials / that jut like hollyhocks above the canopy / of all the rest of us — bright testimonials / to the scale of human possibility.
Marilyn Taylor, “The Geniuses Among Us”
Here are a few of the texts that inspired our creations!
- Aeschylus, “Kassandra’s Cry”
- Anonymous. “Tom O’Bedlam Songs”
- Blake, William. “Mad Song”
- Bly, Nellie. Ten Days in Mad-House
- Burton, Robert. The Anatomy of Melancholy
- Coleridge, Samuel Taylor. “Dejection: An Ode”
- Dickinson, Emily. “Much Madness”
- Du Bois, W.E.B. Strivings of the Negro People
- Erasmus, Desiderius. The Praise of Folly
- Fisher, T.W. Plain Talk About Insanity
- Foucault, Michel. Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason
- Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. “The Yellow Wallpaper”
- Ginsberg, Alan. “Howl”
- Hamilton, Allan McLane. Types of Insanity
- Jay, Mike. This Way Madness Lies: The Asylum and Beyond
- Kennedy, Adrienne. Funnyhouse of a Negro
- Kesey, Ken. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
- Plath, Sylvia. The Bell Jar
- Plato. Phaedrus
- Poe, Edgar Allen. “The Tell Tale Heart”
- Porter, Roy. Madness: A Brief History.
- Rhys, Jean. Wide Sargasso Sea
- Scull, Andrew. Madness in Civilization
- Shakespeare, William. King Lear
- Stevenson, Robert Louis. Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
- Wright, Richard. “The Man Who Lived Underground”
