Melancholy and Culture

This book is the first on the subject of 'melancholy madness' in Spain. The subject of melancholy has a long history, with its golden age being found in the Renaissance. Many books have been written on the subject, notably in the post-war period that has been the second half of the twentieth century. However, the texts that set out to study the history of this disorder give little or no attention to the subject of melancholy in the Spanish Golden Age, in spite of the enormous importance of Spanish thinking on the subject. This book therefore seeks to fill this void and demonstrate that the subject of melancholy in the Spanish Golden Age is an indispensable link in a chain which may help us to understand the appearance of sadness and malcontent in Europe at the dawn of modernity.During the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, texts on melancholy began to circulate in Europe aimed at the general reading public and not just specialists in mental illness. The first book on melancholy written in vernacular language was the "Libro de la melancholia", written by a Spanish doctor, Andres Velasquez. This book takes this work as a starting point in which to study the broad panorama of melancholy in Spain in the period and goes on to examine the importance of melancholy in Cervantes' "Don Quixot" and also deals with the criticisms directed at Velasquez's work by Dr. Juan Huarte de San Juan in the "Examen de ingenios para las ciencias" (known in Britain as "Trial of Wits").