Università Roma Tre

Love as an "illness", "melancholy" and "madness" in romance literature.

Behind Italian stock phrases such as “raffreddare (far sbollire) gli ardenti spiriti”, or “umore malinconico”, or “temperamento sanguigno” lies a cultural legacy that goes back more than a thousand years. Medicine, philosophy and literature have shaped through the centuries a coherent framework of ideas and images which can help us to grasp - to give only an example – the unexpected conceptual closeness of somo of Dante's visions in the “Vita nova” and Baudelaire's “spleen”.
The course’s aim is to illustrate the evolution of the concepts of "love-sickness", "melancholy" and "madness" in literary romance texts from the origins (in particular ancient French, Occitan and Italian) up to masterpieces such as Ariosto's Furioso or Cervantes' Quixote.
During the lessons we will see how medical notions developed in the classical world were inherited by mediaeval Europe thanks to the Arab mediation, and show how medieval conception of human physiology determined the perception of some psychological phenomena.
In this framework we will cast our attention on the connections between the ideas of "love-sickness" of "melancholy" and “madness”.

Lecture notes edited by the teacher.

Non-attending students, are invited to contact the professor at least 3 months prior the exam to define a specific program.