The Secret Wound: Love-Melancholy and Early Modern Romance
Marion A. Wells
This book offers a new reading of early modern romance in the light of historically contemporary accounts of mind, and specifically the medical tradition of love-melancholy. The book argues that the medical profile of the melancholic lover provides an essential context for understanding the characteristic patterns of romance: narrative deferral, epistemological uncertainty, and the endless quest for a quasi-phantasmic beloved. Unlike many recent studies of romance, this book establishes a detailed historical basis for investigating the psychological structure of romance. Wells begins by tracing the development of the medical disorder first known in the Latin west as amor hereos (lovesickness) ... Read more
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About Marion A. Wells
Reviews for The Secret Wound: Love-Melancholy and Early Modern Romance
Book News, INC. "The Secret Wound is well-written and beautifully researched; its impact will be wide, deep, and across several disciplinary borders. Its trenchant account of the widespread literary phenomenon of ... Read more