A Treatise on Lovesickness

Jacques Ferrand

May 1994 · Syracuse University Press

About this ebook

Originally published in Toulouse in French in 1610, this translation of the 1623 edition of Ferrand's treatise, Of Lovesickness or Erotic Melancholy: A Scientific Discourse that teaches how to know the essence, causes, signs, and remedies of this disease of the fantasy, is a veritable summa on the topic of erotomania in the late Renaissance. As both a philosopher and a practicing physician, Ferrand saw his treatise as a medical book to help people, indeed to "cure" them of "the most frequent and most dangerous disease which threatens mortals of both sexes." In order to explore the nature and cure of the "disease," it was necessary for Ferrand to make frequent detours through chapters dealing with heredity, astrology, the interpretation of dreams, incubi and succubi, and love philters as they relate to the nature and diagnosis of erotic love. Ferrand takes up questions concerning the diseases of women, hysteria and satyriasis, real and putative sex changes, and the cures for sterility and impotence that can lead to marital breakdown. In fact, under the general heading of a history of lovesickness, one can actually find in Ferrand five related histories: medicine, mental health, psychiatry, feminine sexuality, and pharmacy—all of which he documents copiously from over three hundred authors, from classical sources to church fathers to naturalists. In their exhaustive analysis of nearly two thousand marginal references, the editors have identified and expanded Ferrand's sources, many of which are either little known or relatively inaccessible today. Their annotations and commentaries provide a goldmine of research materials for the specialist in medieval and Renaissance studies. Combined with Ferrand's text, this critical edition of a seventeenth-century masterpiece presents erotic melancholy as one of the received ideas of the Renaissance and examines its place in the history of thought.

About the author

Donald A. Beecher is associate professor, department of English, Carleton University, and coeditor, with Massimo Ciavolella, of the Carleton Renaissanre Plays in Translation series. Massimo Ciavolella is professor of Italian, University of Toronto, and editor of Quademi d'italianistica, the journal of the Canadian Society for Italian Studies.