Literature and Intoxication - Intoxication has not only been a way to aid creativity - literary writers have also explored and shaped our experiences of intoxication. In trying to write these altered states, they have made radical experiments to create works that mimic, and even induce, states of intoxication

Literature and Intoxication: Writing, Politics and the Experience of Excess,  Eugene Brennan and Russell Williams, eds., Palgrave Macmillan, 2015.
                     

      Sample Chapter

Writers have often been drawn to intoxication, from the legal highs of cigarettes, coffee and alcohol to the illegal highs of heroin, cocaine and ecstasy. Intoxication has not only been a way to aid creativity - literary writers have also explored and shaped our experiences of intoxication. In trying to write these altered states, they have made radical experiments to create works that mimic, and even induce, states of intoxication. This collection draws together a range of academics and writers to explore these states of intoxication and experiences of excess. It considers a wide variety of states of excess, moving from the possibilities of an intoxicated text to a critical account of the appropriation of excess within global capitalism.