The chief interest of this dissertation will lie in the study of the elevated representations of madness in literature of the grand manner; the popular, medical, cosmic and to a lesser extent, the social and legal aspects of the subject will be considered only as a contrast and background to the literary. Contents: popular conception of madness; medical conception; reverberations of the medical conception in literature; general attitude of comedy towards madness; madness in elevated literature, Homer and the deistic conception; Aeschylus; Sophocles and Bacchylides; Euripides; madness after the tragedians; Roman tragedians; Vergil; fury after Vergil; late Greek epic, Quintas Smyrnaeus; Nonnus; Seneca's Hercules Furens; madness of mantic inspiration.