This book explores the intersection between medicine and literature in
medieval Iberian literature and culture. Its overarching argument is
that thirteenth- and fourteenth-century Iberian authors revalorized
the interconnection between the body, the mind, and the soul in light
of the evolving epistemology of medicine. Prior to the reintroduction
of classical medical treatises through Arab authors into European
cultures, mental disorders and bodily diseases were primarily
attributed to moral corruption, demonic influence, and superstition.
The introduction of novel regimens of health as well as treatises on
melancholia into academic institutions and into the cultural landscape
provided the tools for newly minted authors to understand that
psychosomatic illnesses stemmed from malfunctions of the body's
biochemical composition. This book demonstrates that the earliest
books written in the Iberian vernaculars contain the seeds that effect
the shift from a theocentric worldview to a humanistic one. The volume
features close readings of multiple texts, including medical treatises
and religious writings, and King Alfonso X's Cantigas de Santa Maria,
Juan Manuel's Conde Lucanor, and Juan Ruiz's Libro de buen amor. Even
though these texts differ in literary genre, rhetorical strategy, and
even purpose, this study argues that they collectively employ humoral
pathology and melancholic discourses as a means of underscoring the
frailty and transience of human life by showing how somatic conditions
sicken the body, mind, and soul unto death.
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Medical and Spiritual Diseases in Medieval Iberia
Produktdetaljer
ISBN
9780192675354
Publisert
2022
Utgiver
Oxford University Press Academic UK
Språk
Product language
Engelsk
Format
Product format
Digital bok
Forfatter