restrained under a polished veneer. Tottel’s edits make
that bitterness more obvious. Tottel directly calls the
departure of one of the women “a bitter fashion of for-
saking,” instead of Wyatt’s more ambiguous “strange
fashion of forsaking.”
FURTHER READING
Greenblatt, Stephen. Renaissance Self-Fashioning from More to
Shakespeare. Chicago and London: University of Chicago
Press, 1980.
Kreg Segall
LOVESICKNESS Lovesickness, termed amor
hereos in the medieval medical tradition, is a psychoso-
matic disease, a physical manifestation of emotional
distress caused by love. In the medieval and early
Renaissance periods, the phenomenon of lovesickness
crossed boundaries between science and the arts. It
was a much-discussed medical condition as well as a
literary theme, particularly in conjunction with the
COURTLY LOVE tradition.
The primary symptoms of lovesickness are sunken
eyes, jaundiced (yellow) color, insomnia, anorexia, and
depression. Medieval contributions to the medical tra-
dition of lovesickness also associate it with the body’s
humors. It was thus classifi ed as being a step toward or
similar to melancholia, which involved an increase in
black bile and was a type of depression. Cures and
treatments for the disease were baths, wine, song, and
sexual intercourse (preferably with the beloved, but
also with substitutes). However, curative intercourse,
although often considered the best remedy, confl icted
with the dominant Christian moral code of the day.
Some thought lovesickness was caused by love phil-
ters, both charms and potions. ANDREAS CAPELLANUS’s
De amore, a treatise on love (the basis of courtly love)
connects love fi rst and foremost with the sight of the
beloved. His tract connects love with several of the
physical symptoms in the medical tradition of love-
sickness. His work is closely associated with the French
ROMANCE tradition that heavily infl uenced English lit-
erature, in which examples of lovesickness abound.
Popular conceptions of lovesickness indicate a true
crosspollination of ideas from the medical and literary
traditions.
Recorded medical history of lovesickness began with
the well-known Greek physician Galen (ca. 130–200),
whose infl uence persevered through the Renaissance.
In Prognostics of Hippocrates (2nd century), Galen dis-
cussed lovesickness not as a bodily affl iction, but rather
as a passion of the soul. Notably, his study looks at the
case of a woman, known only as the wife of Justus,
whose symptoms increased upon hearing the beloved’s
name. This is one of the few recorded instances of a
woman being diagnosed with lovesickness. From
antiquity through much of the Middle Ages, the medi-
cal institution focused its discussions of lovesickness
on males. Women are largely neglected despite their
greater proclivity for the disease because patriarchal
medieval culture fi nds men’s affl iction more problem-
atic and harder to cure. In the Renaissance, it becomes
associated with women, considered the lustier of the
sexes.
Several other physician-scientists made signifi cant
contributions to a medical understanding of lovesick-
ness trough the Middle Ages. The seventh-century
encyclopedist Isidore of Seville called the disease femi-
neus amor, or womanly love. It is this thinking that
makes lovesickness so problematic to the male popula-
tion. A series of Arabic physicians, Rhazes (860–932),
ibn al-Jazz’r (d. 979), Haly Abbas (d. 994), and Avi-
cenna (980–1070), also paid considerable attention to
the disorder. For his 1124 Viaticum, Constantine the
African translated into Latin ibn al-Jazz’r’s Zad al-
mus’fi r. The Viaticum, which includes a chapter on
lovesickness, was considered a major and authoritative
medical text, and along with its several glosses, it was a
source for information on lovesickness for years. Perter
of Spain (ca. 1205–77) notably includes women in his
commentary, Questions on the Viaticum. In the Renais-
sance, lovesickness became primarily associated with
women, as Jacques Ferrand’s treatise, “Melancholie
Erotique” (Lovesickness) attests.
The disease pervades much of the poetry of the
medieval and early Renaissance periods. GEOFFREY
CHAUCER’s “The Knight’s Tale” from THE CANTERBURY
TALES provides an excellent example of lovesickness in
literature. Arcite exhibits many of the key symptoms,
among other physical signs of emotional distress (ll.
1361–71). The physical and mental discomforts asso-254 LOVESICKNESS