SPAN 3420 - [Melancholy in Early Modern Spanish Literature]

(HB) (ALC-AS, LA-AS) Satisfies Option 1.

Fall. Not offered: 2020-2021. Next offered: 2021-2022. 4 credits. Student option grading.

Prerequisites: SPAN 2095 or permission of instructor required.

F. Valencia.

In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, melancholy flourished at the intersection of medicine, ethics, theology, politics and astrology as a privileged site to think about depression and inwardness, creativity and excess, body and mind, subject and society. We will read Spanish medical texts that discuss melancholy and literary masterpieces that through it explore free will and determination, subjectivity and honor, political power, gender violence, and the sources of creativity. Readings include plays by Calderón and Lope; prose fiction by Zayas and Cervantes; theoretical texts from Aristotle to Agamben, including Cicero, John Cassian, Petrarch, Ficino, Huarte, Freud, and Schiesari. In Spanish.