Title Don Quixote in the archives : madness and literature in early modern Spain / Dale Shuger

Published Edinburgh : Edinburgh University Press, [2012] ©2012

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Description 1 online resource (xii, 219 pages) Series Edinburgh critical studies in Renaissance culture Edinburgh critical studies in Renaissance culture. Contents Introduction -- 1. Many madnesses -- 2. The symptoms of madness -- 3. The madman on the road -- 4. The madman at home and among friends -- 5. Madness, the mind and the novel -- 6. Madness, authority and the novel -- Epilogue (second sally) Summary A new reading of madness in Don Quixote based on archival accounts of insanity. From the records of the Spanish Inquisition, Dale Shuger presents a social corpus of early modern madness that differs radically from the 'literary' madness previously studied. Drawing on over 100 accounts of insanity defences, many of which contain statements from a wide social spectrum -- housekeepers, nieces, doctors, and barbers -- as well as the testimonies of the alleged madmen and women themselves, Shuger argues that Cervantes' exploration of madness as experience is intimately linked to the questions about ethics, reason, will and selfhood that unreason presented for early modern Spaniards. In adapting, challenging and transforming these discourses, Don Quixote investigates spaces of interiority, confronts the limitations of knowledge -- of the self and the world -- and reflects on the social strategies for diagnosing and dealing with those we cannot understand. Shuger discovers an intimate connection between Cervantes's integration of this discourse of madness and his part in forging the new genre of the European novel. Key Features: Challenges the Foucauldian narrative of repression and the Bakhtinian narrative of liberation ; Uses a historicist approach to show how Don Quixote engages, transforms and transcends the historical ; Proposes a new reading of the development of the novel that comes from the unreasonable Baroque subject as opposed to the rational Enlightenment subject Bibliography Includes bibliographical references and index Notes Print version record Subject Cervantes Saavedra, Miguel de, 1547-1616 -- Criticism and interpretation Cervantes Saavedra, Miguel de, 1547-1616. Don Quixote. SUBJECT Cervantes Saavedra, Miguel de, 1547-1616 fast Don Quixote (Cervantes Saavedra, Miguel de) fast Subject Mental illness in literature. Mental illness -- Spain -- History -- 16th century -- Sources Insanity defense -- Spain -- History -- 16th century -- Sources LITERARY CRITICISM/European/Spanish & Portuguese. Insanity defense Mental illness Mental illness in literature Spain Genre/Form Literary criticism Criticism, interpretation, etc. History Sources Literary criticism. Critiques littéraires. Form Electronic book LC no. 2012427103 ISBN 9780748644643 0748644644 9780748649167 0748649166 9780748649150 0748649158 0748644636 9780748644636

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