A Cultural History of Vertigo: Unbalanced (Hardcover) (ISBN-13: 9781350523517)

The first interdisciplinary history of vertigo, this book covers medical accounts from antiquity to the present, testimonies of lived experience, and literary and cultural representations of vertigo.

Balanced. Stable. Grounded. Levelheaded. Even-keeled. There is a long list of words that demonstrate how we attach extraordinary value to a metaphorical sense of balance. From Alfred Hitchcock's cinema, to Salvador Dalí's art, to the writings of Virginia Woolf and Elizabeth Bishop - authors and artists have repeatedly used their work to invoke vertigo, or the loss of balance, as a metaphor for trauma, disorientation, even existential crisis. But what about those of us who have to live with a vertigo that is all-too real? Based on more than thirty in-depth interviews with people who live with balance disorders, this book explores the connections between vertigo-as-metaphor and vertigo-as-lived experience.

Author: Anindya Raychaudhuri
ISBN-10: 1350523518
ISBN-13: 9781350523517
Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
Language: English
Published: 12/11/2025
Pages: 248
Format: Hardcover
Weight: 1.16lbs
Size: 9.21h x 6.14w x 0.63d