Year: 1996
Type: article
Abstract: Almost three decades ago, Otis H. Green noted that Calisto's irrational behavior in Celestina was symptomatic of the illness of love melancholy or amor hereos, the medieval disease whose symptoms include bouts of depression, sighing, and moaning, as well as insomnia and a loss of appetite.Although critics such as June Hall Martin and Ricardo Castells have since studied the causes and effects of Calisto's love sickness, only Frederick A. de Armas has noted the galán's presence in Robert Burton's (1577-1640) The Anatomy of Melancholy, the most extensive early analysis of this illness.1 This study continues the research begun by de Armas, and analyzes Calisto's and Celestina's roles in The Anatomy in order to determine how Rojas's work was viewed by an English authority on the subject of love melancholy. 2 At the same time, the paper 1 See also the parallel research by Anthony J. Cárdenas on !ove melancholy in the Corbacho and Celestina.2 According to Michael Solomon, "F. A. de Armas and Anthony C.írdenas identify Calisto's ailment as ')ove melancholy,' rather than the more medically precise amor hereos.Their terminology, however, relies too heavily on primary sources from the sixteenth and seventeenth-century [sic) (Burton's Anatomy, 1621) and secondary sources .... Melancholy in antiquity and in the Middle Ages was Jess a diagnosis than a humor (black bile), and a humoral condition, or state of temperament.It is true that men identified as having melancholic compositions were more likely to develop certain diseases -including amor hcrcos -than others, but this is not the same as actually having a disease" (59, n. 6).In reality, amor liercos, heroica) !ove, !ove melancholy, erotique melancholy,fcrinus insa1111s amor, erotomania, erotes, mal de amores, the Arabic al-
Source: Celestinesca
Author: Ricardo Castells
Institution: Florida Atlantic University
Language: English
Subfield: Classics
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
OpenAlex ID: W115354916