Two Kinds of 'Literary Poison': Diseases of the Learned and Overstimulating Novels in Georgian Britain

摘要

The twentyfirst century offers many parallels in medicalized concerns about the impact of media, notably the moral-neurological panic about the Internet "rewiring our brains" or becoming "addicted" to binge-watching Netflix.111 Since the mid-twentieth century, ideas of freedom of speech have expanded to include material (sometimes of great literary merit) previously regarded as obscene, which has taken much of the energy out of the debate, at least outside American evangelical circles.112 However, the central dynamic of the Georgian medical critique of reading persists as a medicalizing veneer on moral and political anxieties about media, especially in relation to young women.