Tag: Alain de Botton
-
The anatomy of bibliotherapy: How fiction heals, part III
Dustin Grinnell Boston, Massachusetts, United States Portrait of Friedrich Nietzsche. Photo by Gustav Schultze. 1882. Taken from Nietzsche by Walter Kaufmann, Fourth Edition. Public Domain. A cure for loneliness In the video “What is Literature For?” produced by The School of Life, author Alain de Botton claims that books are a cure for loneliness.…
-
The anatomy of bibliotherapy: How fiction heals, part II
Dustin Grinnell Boston, Massachusetts, United States Frontispiece to the 6th edition of Anatomy of Melancholy by Robert Burton (published under the pseudonym Democritus Junior). 1868. From the Internet Archive and the Public Domain Review. The placebo effect When first exploring literature’s psychological effects on the reader, it is important to consider whether a book…
-
The anatomy of bibliotherapy: How fiction heals, part I
Dustin Grinnell Boston, Massachusetts, United States Man Reading Book showing cityscape, suggesting an Open Doorway. From iStock. Words are, of course, the most powerful drug used by mankind. —Rudyard Kipling Literature is medicine for the soul In the 1980s, the mother of Northrop Frye, a Canadian literary scholar, was in the hospital, ill…