Description:
Fifteenth-century Spanish sentimental fiction can be described as a palimpsest, a dense web of entangled, faded readings and a challenge to the reader. While the parameters of writing sentimental fiction and its textuality have been explored with great success, its readers and how they approached these works have been largely neglected.

Based on a reconstruction of the medical notion of love-as-sickness (amor heroes), premodern reading habits, and interpretive strategies, this book approaches canonical works of sentimental romance from the perspective of a medical-sensitive reader. An analysis of Don Quijote silhouetted against the subtext of sentimental romance reveals how faculty psychology and lovesickness resonate in Golden Age literature.


TABLE OF CONTENTS:

Acknowledgements......7

Introduction......9

Chapter I. A Horizon of Explectations......19

1. Lovesickness in modern scholarship......19
2. Interpretive frames contemporary to sentimental fiction......27
3. Lovesickness and sentimental fiction......56

Chapter II. The First Generation fo Sentimental Fiction......82

1. ‘Digno de perpetua membrança’: Siervo libre de amor......82
2. ‘Todas las cosas tienen dos entendimientos’: Satira de infelice e felice vida......132
3. ‘Por aquella olvidança es causa la presente hobra’: Triste deleytaçion ......146
Final observation......167

Chapter III: The Second Generation fo Sentimental Fiction......171

1. ‘Nuevas leyes usays en amor’: Grimalte y Gradissa......171
2. ‘Si pudiese remediar su mal sin amanzillar mi onrra’: Carcel de amor......194

Epilogue: Esto del morirse los enamorados es cosa de risa: Faculty psychology and lovesickness in Don Quijote......234

Texts cited......249