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contempt. 'He'd be suspicious of the Lamb of Cod! OLIVIA MANNING The Spoilt City, 1962

Pontius Pilate Pontius Pilate was the Roman procurator of Judaea from c.26 to c.36, remembered for presiding at the trial of Jesus Christ. The chief priests and elders who had brought Jesus to him demanded that Jesus be put to death. Pilate, who alone could order the death penalty, was not persuaded that Jesus had committed any crime, but gave in to popular demand and ordered that Jesus be crucified. He washed his hands before the crowd, saying: T am innocent of the blood of this just person' (Matt. 27: 24). Pontius Pilate can be mentioned in the context of someone who makes a public show of proclaiming their innocence and distancing themselves from wrongdoing, and Pilate's gesture proclaiming his innocence has given us the phrase 'to wash one's hands of something', meaning to take no further responsibility for it. >See special entry

D JESUS on p. 223.

'This stuff you sent me,' Nolan barked. 'These damn research tabulations. I thought we'd settled all that. I thought I told you—' 'You told me not to concern myself with them, yes,' Mac agreed as pleasantly as he could manage. 'You also said you hadn't actually seen them. Now that you have, my hands are clean.' 'And who the fuck are you, Pontius Pilate?' 'My hands are clean! He breathed deeply several times.

NANCY FISHER Side Effects, 1994

Susanna Susanna is the central character in the Book of Susanna, one of the books of the Apocrypha in the Bible. She was a beautiful young woman who aroused the lust of two of the elders. When the two elders found her alone in her garden one day, they threatened her that unless she slept with them they would accuse her of adultery with a young man, which would mean her certain death. Susanna chose the latter, saying that she preferred to suffer death than to 'sin in the sight of the Lord'. Susanna was tried and condemned to death, but, in answer to her prayer, God 'raised up the spirit of a young youth, whose name was Daniel'. Daniel cross-examined the two elders and showed that they were lying, upon which they were condemned to death and Susanna was released. Susanna is alluded to as someone who is falsely accused.

Well, we are playing rough, aren't we? And the virtuous Val presenting herself like Susannah, she who suffered from the horny-pawed Elders.

JULIAN BARNES Talking It Over, 1991

Insanity

A variety of literary characters are afflicted with madness. This usually takes the form of a general derangement, but in the case of CAPTAIN AHAB is realized as a single-minded obsession.

Captain Ahab Captain Ahab is the captain of the whaling ship Pequod in Herman Melville's Moby Dick (1851). The monomaniacal Ahab obsessively

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pursues Moby Dick, the huge white whale that on a previous voyage had cost him his leg.

I could feel the road some twenty inches beneath me, unfurling and flying and hissing at incredible speeds across the groaning continent with that mad Ahab at the wheel.

JACK KEROUAC On the Road, 1957

Take Ky Laffoon. Anyone with a name like that has all the potential to be as loopy as Captain Ahab, and sure enough Laffoon was potty.

The Guardian, 1997

Bedlam Bedlam was the popular name of the Hospital of St Mary of Bethlehem, founded as a priory in 1247 at Bishopsgate, London, and by the 14th century a mental hospital. In 1675 a new hospital was built in Moorfields and this in turn was replaced by a building in the Lambeth Road in 1815 (now the Imperial War Museum) and transferred to Beckenham in Kent in 1931. 'Bedlam' is an archaic word for a mental hospital or an asylum. The term 'Tom o' Bedlam' used to be applied to a person who was mentally ill.

I'm sure the child's half an idiot i' some things; for if I send her up-stairs to fetch anything, she forgets what she's gone for, an' perhaps 'ull sit down on the floor I' the sunshine an' plait her hair an' sing to herself like a Bedlam creatur', all the while I'm waiting for her down-stairs.

GEORGE ELIOT The Mill on the Floss, 1860

Don Quixote Don Quixote is the hero of a romance (1605-15) by Miguel de Cervantes, a satirical account of chivalric beliefs and conduct. He has his wits disordered by his devoted reading of chivalric romances and sets out on his horse, Rosinante, in search of knightly adventures himself. In a famous episode he attacks a group of windmills in the belief that they are giants. In Don Quixote's confused mind, a good-looking village girl, whom he names Dulcinea del Toboso, is elevated to the ideal of womanly beauty and virtue.

VSee special entry • DON QUIXOTE on pp. 128.

Is the man going mad? thought I. He is very like Don Quixote.

ELIZABETH GASKELL Oanford, 1 8 5 1 - 3

No one in his senses would dream of following her. To idealize so repulsive a Dulcinea one would have to be madder than Don Quixote himself.

ALDOUS HUXLEY Point Counter Point, 1928

George III George III (i738-1820) reigned as king of Great Britain and Ireland from 1760 to 1820. The American colonies were lost during his reign. His political influence declined from 1788 after repeated bouts of insanity. In 1811 it became clear that the king's mental health made him unfit to rule and his son was made regent. It is now believed that the King suffered from porphyria, a rare hereditary disease.

Even we hacks live with the unspoken dread that, quite suddenly, we could become as cuckoo as King George III and be offered jobs as Daily Mail leader writers.

The Guardian, 1997

Ben Cunn Ben Gunn is a character in Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island (1883), a pirate who has been marooned on Treasure Island and has spent three years going mad in his solitude, living off 'goats and berries and oysters', and dreaming of toasted cheese.

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King Lear Lear, a legendary early king of Britain, is the central figure in Shakespeare's tragedy King Lear (1623). In the play, the foolish and petulant old king divides his kingdom between his two older daughters, Goneril and Regan, but is subsequently driven mad by his outrage at the grudging hospitality and ill treatment he feels he receives at their hands. His 'mad scenes' take place on a heath in a violent storm. Before his wits leaves him, Lear speaks of his fear of becoming deranged:

'0 let me not be mad, not mad, sweet heaven! Keep me in temper; I would not be mad!'.

It was, Ralph thought in a remote and detached way, better to labour for a sane king than mad Lear.

THOMAS KENEALLY The Playmaker, 1987

We are all scared of it, be honest. Madness. Don't tell me, as you flick through these pages in that rather airy way of yours, that you have never considered the dark, almost subliminal fear that you might awake one morning as barking as Lear, for I know better.

The Guardian, 1997

Mad Hatter In Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865), Alice attends a bizarre tea party in the company of the Hatter, the March Hare, and the Dormouse. The Hatter's conversation consists mainly of non sequiturs and strange riddles like 'Why is a raven like a writing-desk?'. To be 'as mad as a hatter' is to be wildly eccentric, a phrase that derives from the effects of mercury poisoning that was formerly a common disease suffered by hatters. • See

special entry • ALICE IN WONDERLAND on p. 10.

So for a while, like two mad hatters, we hunted them by torch light, topping each

other's scores.

MAVIS NICHOLSON Martha Jane and Me, 1992

March Hare The March Hare is a character in Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865), who is present at the Mad Hatter's tea party: 'The March Hare took the watch and looked at it gloomily: then he dipped it into his cup of tea, and looked at it again.' The term 'as mad as a March Hare' comes from the leaping and boxing and other excitable behaviour characteristic of hares in the breeding season in March. • See special entry •

WONDERLAND 0/7 p. 10.

Then, mad as a bunch of March hares, yelling and hooting at the top of our voices, we rushed as fast as our legs would carry us, through the wood to home.

WINIFRED FOLEY Child in the Forest Trilogy, 1974

Nebuchadnezzar Nebuchadnezzar (c.630-562 BC) was a king of Babylon whose madness is described in the Book of Daniel in the Bible: 'He was driven from men, and did eat grass as oxen, and his body was wet with the dew of heaven, till his hairs were grown like eagles' feathers, and his nails like birds' claws' (Dan. 4: 33). • See special entry D DANIEL on p. 86.

Ophelia In Shakespeare's Hamlet (1604), Ophelia, the daughter of Polonius, is in love with Hamlet but rejected by him. Her grief after her father's fatal stabbing at Hamlet's hands sends her into a state of madness. Ophelia's famous 'mad scene', during which she sings several bawdy and death-obsessed songs, is soon followed by the report that she has drowned herself. According to

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theatrical tradition, she is often portrayed on stage with flowers entwined in her hair.

'My mother mentioned something about it. According to her, the name was Daisy Belford. She wouldn't accept that Arthur was dead and kept wandering round among the glaciers looking for him.' 'A kind of goat-girl Ophelia. Very picturesque, it must have been. D'you suppose she twined edelweiss in her hair?'

GILLIAN LINSCOTT Widow's Peak, 1994

Mrs Rochester The deranged wife of Edward Rochester in Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre (1847) is kept in seclusion at Thornfield Hall. Her existence is only revealed when Jane's marriage to Rochester is about to take place. The early life of Bertha Rochester is imagined by Jean Rhys in her novel Wide Sargasso Sea (1966). Allusions to Mrs Rochester are often to a strange or mad person who is kept locked or hidden away in an attic.

Dropped at the comfy, modern entrance of St Pat's, the psychiatric hospital where Professor Anthony Clare does his day job, I had no choice but to make my way through the entire building to reach Clare's Georgian lair on the far side. It was oddly quiet—the Mrs. Rochesters of Dublin obviously have good sound-proofing in their attics.

The Sunday Telegraph, 1999

Inspiration

This theme is dominated by the Muses and the places associated with their

worship.

Aganippe In Greek mythology, Aganippe was a spring sacred to the Muses on Mount Helicon, whose waters were believed to give inspiration to those who drank from them.

I never dranke of Aganippe well.

PHILIP SIDNEY Astrophel and Stella, 1586

Apollo In Greek mythology, Apollo was the son of Zeus and Leto. Among his numerous attributes, he was the god of poetic inspiration. • See special entry

D APOLLO on p. 15.

Calliope Calliope was one of the nine Muses in Greek mythology, associated especially with epic poetry. • See MUSES.

Castalia In Greek mythology, the Castalian spring was a spring on Mount

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Parnassus that was sacred to Apollo and to the Muses, and its waters were said to have the power of inspiring the gift of poetry in those who drank of them.

A stream of prophecy, which rivalled the truth and reputation of the Delphic oracle, flowed from the Castalian fountain of Daphne.

EDWARD GIBBON History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, 1781

CIÎO Clio was one of the nine Muses in Greek mythology, associated especially with history. • See MUSES.

Dulcinea Dulcinea is the name of Don Quixote's love in Cervantes' picaresque romance Don Quixote, published 1605-15. Her real name is Aldonza Lorenzo but Don Quixote, who naively idealizes her, gives her the name Dulcinea del Toboso and finds in her inspirations for his many deeds of misplaced heroism.

• See special entry • DON QUIXOTE on p. 128.

No one in his senses would dream of following her. To idealize so repulsive a Dulcinea one would have to be madder than Don Quixote himself.

ALDOUS HUXLEY Point Counter Point, 1928

EratO Erato was one of the nine Muses in Greek mythology, associated especially with the lyre and lyric love. •See MUSES.

Euterpe Euterpe was one of the nine Muses in Greek mythology, associated especially with lyric poetry and flute playing. • See MUSES.

Helicon In Greek mythology, Helicon was the largest mountain of Boeotia and was associated with the Muses. The spring of Aganippe and fountain of Hippocrene, believed to give inspiration to those who drank of their waters, were on its slopes.

Hippocrene In Greek mythology, Hippocrene was a fountain sacred to the Muses on Mount Helicon, created for them by the winged horse Pegasus, who stamped his moon-shaped hoof. It was believed to give the power of poetic inspiration to those who drank of it. It is alluded to in John Keats' poem Ode to a Nightingale. In the Huxley quotation below, the writer quotes directly from Keats.

0 for a beaker full of the warm South, Full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene.

JOHN KEATS Ode to a Nightingale, 1820

'Warbling your native woodnotes wild!' said Willie. 'May I help myself to some of that noble brandy? The blushful Hippocrene.'

ALDOUS HUXLEY Point Counter Point, 1928

Melpomene Melpomene was one of the nine Muses in Greek mythology, associated especially with tragedy. • See MUSES.

His face is like the tragic mask of Melpomene.

THOMAS HARDY Jude the Obscure, 1895

Muses In Greek mythology, the nine Muses were the daughters of Zeus and Mnemosyne, the goddess of memory. They were the patron goddesses of intellectual and creative ability, literature, music, and dance, providing inspiration to mortals. Later, each individual Muse became associated with one particular art: