Thomas De Quincey

Thomas De Quincey
Born Thomas Penson De Quincey15 August 1785 Manchester, Lancashire, England
Died 8 December 1859 (aged 74) Edinburgh, Scotland
Resting place St Cuthbert’s Churchyard, Edinburgh
Notable works Confessions of an English Opium-Eater On the Knocking at the Gate in Macbeth

What was Thomas de Quincey addicted to?

Thomas De Quincey’s intoxicating prose derived its power from the writer’s opium habit. Long before he tried opium, Thomas De Quincey, the English essayist, was addicted to books.

When his father died who cared for the seven year old De Quincey?

Matters were not improved when, at the age of 6 or 7 his father died, leaving him in the care of a strict mother who severely hampered his confidence.

Who wrote Confessions of an opium-Eater?

Thomas De Quincey Confessions of an English Opium-Eater / Authors Thomas De Quincey’s Confessions of an English Opium-Eater was first published in 1821 in the London Magazine.

When was Confessions of an opium-Eater written?

1821 Confessions of an English Opium-Eater, autobiographical narrative by English author Thomas De Quincey, first published in The London Magazine in two parts in 1821, then as a book, with an appendix, in 1822.

What according to Thomas De Quincey is the function of various literary genres?

The function of the literature of knowledge, De Quincey wrote, is to teach; the function of [the literature of power] is to move. . . . … Men have so little reflected on the higher functions of literature as to find it a paradox if one should describe it as a mean or subordinate purpose of books to give information.

How did De Quincey define literature?

In his critical writings De Quincey consistently maintains that. literature is the noblest of the arts, not a mere embellishment of life but one of its deep-sunk props, and that it fulfills its supreme end. by conveying the sense of power and the illimitable incarnated as it. were in pleasure.

Who is the inventor of drugs?

Over the next 150 years, scientists learnt more about chemistry and biology. The first modern, pharmaceutical medicine was invented in 1804 by Friedrich Sertrner, a German scientist. He extracted the main active chemical from opium in his laboratory and named it morphine, after the Greek god of sleep.

How tall was Thomas Quincey?

But as the lopsided relationship inevitably soured, De Quincey, whose effeminacy Wordsworth may have come to despise, found himself locked outside again a position emblematized in the image of his diminutive frame (he was less than 5 feet tall), perched sprite-like every night for weeks on the grave of Wordsworth’s …

Why ST Coleridge is called opium eater?

Desperate for some financial success with his poetry, Coleridge intentionally attempted to portray himself as a dreamy opium-eater because he, perhaps rightly, believed that it would draw a morbid fascination to his work. Opium played an exciting role in the public image of Romantic literature.

Why did Thomas de Quincey take opium?

It is the sections that describe his opium addiction, however, that have become the most famous. De Quincey began to take the drug as a student at Oxford, to relieve a severe bout of toothache, and remained dependent on it for the rest of his life.

Did de Quincey stop using opium?

The collision of these competing impulses made it difficult for De Quincey to see his addiction clearly, and impossible for him to surmount it. Since leaving off opium, he once noted wryly, I take a great deal too much of it for my health. De Quincey initiated the story of modern addiction.

What do you make from opium?

Approximately 12 percent of opium is made up of the analgesic alkaloid morphine, which is processed chemically to produce heroin and other synthetic opioids for medicinal use and for the illegal drug trade. …

Opium
Opium poppy seed pod exuding latex from a cut
Source plant(s) Papaver somniferum
Part(s) of plant Latex

How does De Quincey institute a difference between the literature of knowledge and the literature of power?

All the Literature of Knowledge builds only ground nests, that are swept away by floods, or confounded by the plough; but the Literature of Power builds nests in aerial altitudes of temples sacred from violation, or of forests inaccessible to fraud.

Who distinguished between literature of knowledge and literature of power?

Wordsworth for the distinction between the literature of power and the literature of knowledge,1 the idea is generally, and with justice, attributed to him. It was he who first introduced the concept of literary power to a wide readership and made it one of the touchstones of his own criticism.

Who has been associated with Touchstone method?

Arnold Arnold proposed this method of evaluation as a corrective for what he called the fallacious estimates of poems according to their historic importance in the development of literature, or else according to their personal appeal to an individual critic.

How does literature give us knowledge?

Books can give us knowledge by encouraging us to think. … Books can also give us knowledge through the experience of reading. Many people feel that when they read a book, especially works of fiction, they interact with another world. Reading books gives us the opportunity to learn through vicarious experience.

What gives literature power?

Literature is a powerful storytelling technology that unites us across space and time. Literature chronicles and preserves the ever-evolving human story. It invites us to reflect on our lives and, in discussion with others, to add our voices to the exploration of timeless human themes. Literature makes us think.

What are two functions of literature?

Thus the main functions of literature are to entertain and give pleasure to the reader, and to heighten his awareness of certain aspects of life. Besides these two primary functions, literature also performs three subsidiary functions’propaganda,’ ‘release’ and ‘escape.

What is the oldest drug?

Opium has been known for millennia to relieve pain and its use for surgical analgesia has been recorded for several centuries. The Sumerian clay tablet (about 2100 BC) is considered to be the world’s oldest recorded list of medical prescriptions.

What was the first drug?

1st millennium BC

Year of discovery Name of the drug
1st millennium BC Hyoscyamus niger
600 B.C. Glycerol, produced
300 B.C. Opium

What was the first drug to be made illegal?

In the United States, the first drug law was passed in San Francisco in 1875, banning the smoking of opium in opium dens.