How are signs and symptoms of psychic alienation - 'the diagnostics of madness' in M. E. Braddon's phrase - variously enfigured in literary texts. How do textual inscriptions of the unconscious, of that realm which is, by definition, the locus of the occluded and unreadable, function as vehicles of meaning and value? And how do readers invariably figure in some form of the 'madness' - the contradictions and illusions of mastery - they attempt to figure out?

These are some of the questions addressed by Figuring Madness, a study which employs the insights of current poststructuralist psycho-analysis and semiotic theory to examine the complex interimplication of the subject and object of madness that is always implied by the dynamics of analytic dia-gnosis.

In her focus on the implications of writing and reading signs of madness, Chris Wiesenthal offers new interpretations of both canonical and non-canonical texts by authors spanning the period from Jane Austen and Anthony trollope to Charlotte Perkins Gilman and Henry James.