Book ID: CBB001221265

Diseases of the Imagination and Imaginary Disease in the Early Modern Period (2011)

unapi

Haskell, Yasmin Annabel (Editor)


Brepols


Publication Date: 2011
Physical Details: xxvi + 424 pp.; ill.; bibl.; index
Language: English

This pioneering, interdisciplinary collection explores the long history of psychosomatic illness from the fifteenth to the eighteenth centuries. The early modern period was arguably the greatest `age of the imagination' in Europe, and certainly the period in which the powers attributed to that faculty had the greatest consequences -- both in theory and in ordinary people's lives. Theologians and physicians debated the reality of witchcraft (no simple battle between Religion and Science, as believers and doubters could be found on both sides); the existence and pathology of werewolves and vampires; the role of the imagination in influencing the unborn child and in causing disease even in remote others. The imagination was implicated in conditions from plague, lovesickness, and anger through to hysteric and hypochondriac disease -- the latter a frightening syndrome of gastric, respiratory, cardiac, and psychiatric problems believed to be epidemic. The essays in this volume, by established and emerging scholars from diverse intellectual and cultural traditions, explore Latin and vernacular, philosophical, medical, poetic, dramatic, epistolary, and juridical sources to expose the tangled conceptual roots of our modern affective, anxiety and somatoform disorders. They confirm that controversies about `mad' versus `bad', `real' versus `psychosomatic' complaints, and the interdependence of perception, emotion, and physical illness are by no means a monopoly of our times.

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Description Contents:


Reviewed By

Review Daalder, Joost (2012) Review of "Diseases of the Imagination and Imaginary Disease in the Early Modern Period". Parergon: Bulletin of the Australian and New Zealand Association for Medieval and Renaissance Studies (p. 249). unapi

Review Murray, Patrick J. (2013) Review of "Diseases of the Imagination and Imaginary Disease in the Early Modern Period". Early Science and Medicine: A Journal for the Study of Science, Technology and Medicine in the Pre-modern Period (pp. 577-579). unapi

Review Lyons, Bridget Gellert (2012) Review of "Diseases of the Imagination and Imaginary Disease in the Early Modern Period". Renaissance Quarterly (pp. 923-924). unapi

Review Murray, Patrick J. (2013) Review of "Diseases of the Imagination and Imaginary Disease in the Early Modern Period". Early Science and Medicine: A Journal for the Study of Science, Technology and Medicine in the Pre-modern Period (p. 577). unapi

Includes Chapters

Chapter Haskell, Yasmin (2011) Introduction: When is a Disease not a Disease? Seeming and Suffering in Early Modern Europe. In: Diseases of the Imagination and Imaginary Disease in the Early Modern Period. unapi

Chapter Gowland, Angus (2011) Melancholy, Imagination, and Dreaming in Renaissance Learning. In: Diseases of the Imagination and Imaginary Disease in the Early Modern Period. unapi

Chapter Shuger, Dale (2011) Beyond Allegory: The Meanings of Madness in Early Modern Spain. In: Diseases of the Imagination and Imaginary Disease in the Early Modern Period. unapi

Chapter Rütten, Thomas (2011) Masquerades with the Dead: The Laughing Democritus in an Observatio on Melancholy by Pieter van Foreest. In: Diseases of the Imagination and Imaginary Disease in the Early Modern Period. unapi

Chapter Waardt, Hans De (2011) “Lightning strikes, wherever ire dwells with power”: Johan Wier on Anger as an Illness. In: Diseases of the Imagination and Imaginary Disease in the Early Modern Period. unapi

Chapter Hirsch, Brett D. (2011) Lycanthropy in Early Modern England: The Case of John Webster's The Duchess of Malfi. In: Diseases of the Imagination and Imaginary Disease in the Early Modern Period. unapi

Chapter Meek, Heather (2011) “[W]hat fatigues we fine ladies are fated to endure”: Sociosomatic Hysteria as a Female “English Malady”. In: Diseases of the Imagination and Imaginary Disease in the Early Modern Period. unapi

Chapter Rousseau, George S. (2011) Envoi: The Afterlife of Maladies Imaginaires. In: Diseases of the Imagination and Imaginary Disease in the Early Modern Period. unapi

Chapter Giglioni, Guido (2011) Coping with Inner and Outer Demons: Marsilio Ficino's Theory of the Imagination. In: Diseases of the Imagination and Imaginary Disease in the Early Modern Period. unapi

Chapter Beecher, Donald (2011) Witches, the Possessed, and the Diseases of the Imagination. In: Diseases of the Imagination and Imaginary Disease in the Early Modern Period (pp. 103-138). unapi

Chapter Strocchia, Sharon T. (2011) The Melancholic Nun in Late Renaissance Italy. In: Diseases of the Imagination and Imaginary Disease in the Early Modern Period. unapi

Chapter Bonzol, Judith (2011) Afflicted Children: Supernatural Illness, Fear, and Anxiety in Early Modern England. In: Diseases of the Imagination and Imaginary Disease in the Early Modern Period. unapi

Chapter Calabritto, Monica (2011) Tasso's Melancholy and its Treatment: A Patient's Uneasy Relationship with Medicine and Physicians. In: Diseases of the Imagination and Imaginary Disease in the Early Modern Period. unapi

Chapter Haskell, Yasmin (2011) The Anatomy of Hypochondria: Malachias Geiger's Microcosmus hypochondriacus (Munich, 1652). In: Diseases of the Imagination and Imaginary Disease in the Early Modern Period. unapi

Chapter Vermeir, Koen (2011) Vampires as Creatures of the Imagination: Theories of Body, Soul, and Imagination in Early Modern Vampire Tracts (1659--1755). In: Diseases of the Imagination and Imaginary Disease in the Early Modern Period. unapi

Citation URI
https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB001221265/

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Authors & Contributors
Bigotti, Fabrizio
Weeks, S. V.
Sommer, Andreas
Storch, Michael
Siraisi, Nancy G.
Rusu, Doina-Cristina
Concepts
Mental disorders and diseases
Psychology
Medicine
Imagination
Occult sciences
Psychiatry
Time Periods
17th century
16th century
Renaissance
Early modern
18th century
15th century
Places
England
Germany
France
Europe
Eastern Europe
Florence (Italy)
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