Dickinson's "After great pain, a formal feeling comes—" (1861) describes the after-effects of profound physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual agony.

Dickinson's "To lose one's faith—surpass," (1861), like "I felt a Funeral, in my Brain," explores the results of spiritual devastation.

Like the speaker of "I felt a Funeral, in my Brain," the title character of William Shakespeare's Hamlet (1601) faces the breakdown of his rational faculties.

Dickinson's "Much Madness Is Divinest Sense—" (1861) treats the theme of insanity in a much different way than "I felt a Funeral, in my Brain"; here, madness is likened to the spirit of non-conformity.

The American novelist William Styron's Darkness Visible (1990) is a memoir of his battle with madness, specifically, clinical depression. The book is remarkable for the ways in which Sty-ron depicts his struggle to understand the workings of his own mind.

Robert Burton's famous psychological...