My main interest is early modern Spanish literature, culture, and science. The title of my doctoral thesis (submitted 2014, approved Jan. 2015) is "Narratives of Madness: Scientific and Literary Representations of Madness in Golden Age Spain (16th and 17th Centuries)", and this is more or less what it's about:
As many anthropological, historical, and literary studies have demonstrated throughout the past century, the category of madness is highly dependent on the cultural context in which it is defined, and tends to vary across different historical epochs. My dissertation aims to reconstruct the category of madness in the epoch known as Golden Age Spain (16th and 17th centuries) by exploring the ways it was thought of, explained, conceptualized and treated in its scientific and literary representations of the time.
My research focuses on three main problems: (1) the boundaries of madness (locura) as a category and its relation to adjacent or overlapping categories (e.g., necedad, ‘folly’) and supposedly opposite categories (e.g., cordura, meaning both ‘sanity’ and ‘prudence’ or ‘good sense); (2) the tension between discourses pertaining to competing perspectives to which this category was considered to belong, namely medical-naturalistic discourse, focusing of the mad subject’s body; theological or metaphysical discourse, which emphasize the divine causes and aspects of madness, and social discourse, which tends to locate the significant aspects of madness in context and its interaction of the subject considered to be mad (3) the ways by which these discourses construe madness and its imaginary world in relation to variables such as gender, social class, age, or religious status (e.g., heresy, religious heterodoxy, or the converso situation).
The sources analyzed in the dissertation are of three sorts: (1) lexicographic and encyclopedic texts, the most important of which is Sebastián de Covarrubias’s Tesoro de la Lengua Castellana o Española [“A Thesaurus of Castilian of Spanish Language”] (1611). The numerous definitions, metaphors, etymologies, and proverbs provided in these texts permit us to map many of the cultural associations available for the 16th and 17th century Spanish-speaker when thinking about madness; (2) medical and scientific treatises, such as Huarte de San Juan’s Examen de ingenios para las ciencias [translated to English as “An Examination of Men’s Wits”] (1575), which, up until the 18th century was considered to be one of the most influential scientific works written be a Spaniard, or Andrés Velásquez’s Libro de la melancholia [“Book of Melancholy”], which is the earliest text dedicated exclusively to theoretical and clinical aspects of the black bile written in a European vernacular language; (3) literary narrative fiction, including Cervantes’s novella El licenciado Vidriera [“The Glass Graduate”] (1613), whose protagonist believes to be made of glass, or Juan Pérez de Montalbán’s La mayor confusion [“The great confusion”], depicting an insane, incestuous relationship between a mad mother and her son.
By exploring on the one hand the theoretical reflections – and particularly their relation to the clinical case-histories – in the medical treatises, and on the other hand the literary representations of mad characters, I show how the dialogue between medicine and literature – which I claim to be richer and more complex than the mere ‘influence’ of the former on the latter – help us understand the imagined world of madness and the tensions which characterize it.
Supervisors: Ruth Fine and Yoram Bilu
As many anthropological, historical, and literary studies have demonstrated throughout the past century, the category of madness is highly dependent on the cultural context in which it is defined, and tends to vary across different historical epochs. My dissertation aims to reconstruct the category of madness in the epoch known as Golden Age Spain (16th and 17th centuries) by exploring the ways it was thought of, explained, conceptualized and treated in its scientific and literary representations of the time.
My research focuses on three main problems: (1) the boundaries of madness (locura) as a category and its relation to adjacent or overlapping categories (e.g., necedad, ‘folly’) and supposedly opposite categories (e.g., cordura, meaning both ‘sanity’ and ‘prudence’ or ‘good sense); (2) the tension between discourses pertaining to competing perspectives to which this category was considered to belong, namely medical-naturalistic discourse, focusing of the mad subject’s body; theological or metaphysical discourse, which emphasize the divine causes and aspects of madness, and social discourse, which tends to locate the significant aspects of madness in context and its interaction of the subject considered to be mad (3) the ways by which these discourses construe madness and its imaginary world in relation to variables such as gender, social class, age, or religious status (e.g., heresy, religious heterodoxy, or the converso situation).
The sources analyzed in the dissertation are of three sorts: (1) lexicographic and encyclopedic texts, the most important of which is Sebastián de Covarrubias’s Tesoro de la Lengua Castellana o Española [“A Thesaurus of Castilian of Spanish Language”] (1611). The numerous definitions, metaphors, etymologies, and proverbs provided in these texts permit us to map many of the cultural associations available for the 16th and 17th century Spanish-speaker when thinking about madness; (2) medical and scientific treatises, such as Huarte de San Juan’s Examen de ingenios para las ciencias [translated to English as “An Examination of Men’s Wits”] (1575), which, up until the 18th century was considered to be one of the most influential scientific works written be a Spaniard, or Andrés Velásquez’s Libro de la melancholia [“Book of Melancholy”], which is the earliest text dedicated exclusively to theoretical and clinical aspects of the black bile written in a European vernacular language; (3) literary narrative fiction, including Cervantes’s novella El licenciado Vidriera [“The Glass Graduate”] (1613), whose protagonist believes to be made of glass, or Juan Pérez de Montalbán’s La mayor confusion [“The great confusion”], depicting an insane, incestuous relationship between a mad mother and her son.
By exploring on the one hand the theoretical reflections – and particularly their relation to the clinical case-histories – in the medical treatises, and on the other hand the literary representations of mad characters, I show how the dialogue between medicine and literature – which I claim to be richer and more complex than the mere ‘influence’ of the former on the latter – help us understand the imagined world of madness and the tensions which characterize it.
Supervisors: Ruth Fine and Yoram Bilu
less
InterestsView All (41)
Uploads
Papers by Or Hasson
1555), the detailed account of Lázaro’s conversion—i.e., the series of events leading to his
metamorphosis and the vicissitudes of assuming a new identity—has received so far scarce
scholarly attention. Through a close reading of key moments in the 1555 sequel, the present
study attempts to explore Lázaro’s subjective experience as it is conveyed in the text, and reflect
on the construction of converso subjectivity in Golden Age Spanish imaginary.
Leido desde una perspectiva narratológica, el cuentecillo cervantino del Quijote de 1615 sobre el licenciado que decía ser Neptuno resulta un relato de intencionalidad ambigua y cuestionadora respecto de la noción de la locura como esencia y como patología.
The file uploaded here is a final draft of the article. The published version can be found in Anuario de Estudios Cervantinos, VIII, pp. 137-150.
(wit) from the perspective of Philosophia naturalis, without taking recourse to metaphysical or theological explications.
Interestingly, little examination has been devoted to sexuality-related matters in Huarte’s text.
Despite the fact that the Examen offers relatively few references to these matters, it permits us to reconstruct a theory of sexuality according to its author. The relation between Huarte’s theory of sexuality and the critical spirit predominant in the rest of his treatise is a complex
one, due to the fact that his use of the natural paradigm for explaining sexual phenomenology is inconstant. On the one hand, the connection the physician establishes between sex drive, sexual activity and temperament coincides with the methodological spirit of the rest of his treatise. Similarly, in his explanation of homosexuality, his discourse remains close to natural philosophy. However, his explanation of the shame experienced by the individual who deals with such issues is characterized by transgressions of the boundaries of natural philosophy discourse.
Thus, Register shifts in Huarte’s discourse in certain passages in the Examen delineate the limit between the psychological paradigm used by Huarte and between what is still considered to be subject to the jurisdiction of metaphysics and theology.
Other by Or Hasson
Events by Or Hasson
Conferences, Workshops, Colloquia by Or Hasson
Book Reviews by Or Hasson
Books by Or Hasson
1555), the detailed account of Lázaro’s conversion—i.e., the series of events leading to his
metamorphosis and the vicissitudes of assuming a new identity—has received so far scarce
scholarly attention. Through a close reading of key moments in the 1555 sequel, the present
study attempts to explore Lázaro’s subjective experience as it is conveyed in the text, and reflect
on the construction of converso subjectivity in Golden Age Spanish imaginary.
Leido desde una perspectiva narratológica, el cuentecillo cervantino del Quijote de 1615 sobre el licenciado que decía ser Neptuno resulta un relato de intencionalidad ambigua y cuestionadora respecto de la noción de la locura como esencia y como patología.
The file uploaded here is a final draft of the article. The published version can be found in Anuario de Estudios Cervantinos, VIII, pp. 137-150.
(wit) from the perspective of Philosophia naturalis, without taking recourse to metaphysical or theological explications.
Interestingly, little examination has been devoted to sexuality-related matters in Huarte’s text.
Despite the fact that the Examen offers relatively few references to these matters, it permits us to reconstruct a theory of sexuality according to its author. The relation between Huarte’s theory of sexuality and the critical spirit predominant in the rest of his treatise is a complex
one, due to the fact that his use of the natural paradigm for explaining sexual phenomenology is inconstant. On the one hand, the connection the physician establishes between sex drive, sexual activity and temperament coincides with the methodological spirit of the rest of his treatise. Similarly, in his explanation of homosexuality, his discourse remains close to natural philosophy. However, his explanation of the shame experienced by the individual who deals with such issues is characterized by transgressions of the boundaries of natural philosophy discourse.
Thus, Register shifts in Huarte’s discourse in certain passages in the Examen delineate the limit between the psychological paradigm used by Huarte and between what is still considered to be subject to the jurisdiction of metaphysics and theology.