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Original article
Giselle, madness & death
  1. S P Wainwright,
  2. C Williams
  1. King’s College London, University of London, London, UK
  1. Correspondence to:
 S P Wainwright
 King’s College London University of London, 57 Waterloo Road, London, SE1 8WA, UK; steven.wainwrightkcl.ac.uk

Abstract

In this paper the Romantic ballet Giselle (1841) is used as a case study through which to examine the themes of madness and death. Giselle is a heartrending story of the intertwining of love and death. It is argued that Giselle is an evocative example of narratives of hysteria and suicide, and literature in the field of medical history is drawn upon to demonstrate the relations between the cultural fields of ballet, medicine, and the wider social world at the time of Giselle. Finally, it is suggested that the notion of the embodiment of vulnerability provides a fruitful way to meld our understandings of the interconnections between the arts, society, and medicine.

  • medical humanities
  • ballet
  • madness
  • death

https://doi.org/10.1136/jmh.2003.000149

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    Footnotes

    • ↵* This is brought out in two videos of Giselle. In the 1977 American Ballet Theatre production (with Mikhail Baryshnikov as Albrecht and Natalia Makarova as Giselle) Giselle dies of a broken heart—the sword is taken from her before she harms herself with it. In contrast, in the 1979 Bavarian State Opera Ballet production (with Rudolf Nureyev as Albrecht and Lynn Seymour as Giselle) Giselle clearly stabs herself with the sword.