Reading to Stay Alive: Tolstoy, Hopkins and the Dilemma of Existence

Chris  Dowrick

Reading to Stay Alive

Tolstoy, Hopkins and the Dilemma of Existence

This book explores how literary reading can enable people considering suicide to stay alive. Written by an academic general practitioner with longstanding expertise in mental health, the book is grounded in the lived experience of patients, intertwined with perspectives from social psychology and moral philosophy. At its heart are reflective descriptions of the author's encounters with Tolstoy's Anna Karenina, and the Terrible Sonnets of Gerard Manley Hopkins, illuminating the therapeutic potential of recursive interactions between literature and experience.

- Aa Reduce text
- Aa Enlarge text

View selected items
Save to my bookmarks
Export citations
Download PDF (zip)
Save to Kindle
Save to Dropbox
Save to Google Drive
Save content to
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to .

To save content items to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Please be advised that item(s) you selected are not available.
You are about to save
Your Kindle email address

Please provide your Kindle email.

@free.kindle.com @kindle.com (service fees apply)

By using this service, you agree that you will only keep content for personal use, and will not openly distribute them via Dropbox, Google Drive or other file sharing services

Metrics

Total number of HTML views: 0

Total number of PDF views: 0 *

Loading metrics...

Total views: 0 *

Loading metrics...

* Views captured on Cambridge Core between #date#. This data will be updated every 24 hours.

Usage data cannot currently be displayed.

Reading to Stay Alive

Tolstoy, Hopkins and the Dilemma of Existence

Book description

Refine List

Actions for selected content:

Contents

Frontmatter
pp i-iv

Dedication
pp v-vi

Contents
pp vii-viii

Figures
pp ix-ix

Acknowledgements
pp x-x

1 - Staying Alive?
pp 1-18

2 - Thwarted Belongingness
pp 19-36

3 - Escape from Them All and from Myself
pp 37-60

4 - Not Choose Not to Be
pp 61-84

5 - Points of Transformation
pp 85-110

6 - Creating Raisons d’etre
pp 111-130

7 - Staying Alive
pp 131-140

Index
pp 141-148

Metrics

Full text views

Book summary page views

Reading to Stay Alive

Tolstoy, Hopkins and the Dilemma of Existence

Book description

Refine List

Actions for selected content:

Save Search

Contents

Metrics

Full text views

Book summary page views