Lovesickness and gender in early modern English literature
By: Lesel Dawson.
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 2008
Place of publication: New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 244
ISBN-13: 9780199266128
Subjects: English literature -- Early modern, 1500-1700 -- History and criticism; Lovesickness in literature; Melancholy in literature; Women in literature; Gender identity in literature; Literature and medicine -- England -- History -- 16th century; Literature and medicine -- England -- History -- 17th century
Description: "Lesel Dawson analyzes literary representations of lovesickness in relation to medical ideas about desire and wider questions about gender and identity, exploring the different ways that desire is believed to take root in the body, how gender roles are encoded and contested in courtship, and the psychic pains and pleasures of frustrated passion. She explores the relationship between women's lovesickness and other female maladies (such as hysteria and green sickness), and asks whether women can suffer from intellectual forms of melancholy generally thought to be exclusively male. Finally, she examines the ways in which Neoplatonism offers an alternative construction of love to that found in natural philosophy and considers how anxieties concerning love's ability to emasculate the male lover emerge indirectly in remedies for lovesickness."--Jacket.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.