Insanity in Bessie Head’s A Question of Power (1973) and Paulo Coelho’s Veronika Decides to Die (1998): A Thematic Study

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Date

2021

Journal Title

Journal ISSN

Volume Title

Publisher

Université Mouloud Mammeri Tizi Ouzou

Abstract

The present dissertationis a contribution to Comparative Literature and Disability Studiesthrough a comparison of Bessie Head‘s A Question of power (1973) and Paulo Coelho‘sVeronika Decides to Die (1998). This is carried out under ideas about insanity developed in Foucault‘s Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason (1988). First, the study investigates how Bessie Head and Paulo Coelho‘s personal lives inspired them to writeA Question of power (1973) and Veronika Decides to Die (1998) respectively, as it is reflected in the two narratives. It also examines the way in which insanity is portrayed in the two novels, and why madness isa recurrent theme in both novels. The study provesthat though Michel Foucault‘sideas about madness are closely related to the study of the history of the Western world, his ideas about madness are also relevant in other spaces of the world such as Slovenia in Central Europe and Botswana in South-West Africa. The major findings of our research demonstrate that Foucault‘s notions about madness are very relevant in places other than the Western world, regardless of the fact that they were mainly constructed by only studying the history of the Western world.

Description

30cm ; 57p.

Keywords

Bessie Head,Comparative Literature, Disability Studies, Madness, Mental Illness,Michel Foucault, Paulo Coelho.

Citation

Literature and Civilization