Images in mind: Readings of Spanish sentimental fiction in the context of lovesickness and faculty psychology

The analysis of the emotional states of the lovestruck protagonists is generally accepted as the most salient generic feature of the 15th - and 16th-Century Castilian texts grouped under the lemma sentimental romance or sentimental fiction. Unlike the projecting of modern notions of love onto sentimental fiction, the reconstruction of contemporary horizons of expectations and reading habits is capable of accounting for a significant number of the features of the texts studied. From the perspective of a medical-sensitive reader familiar with the notion lovesickness, amor hereos, as a psycho-somatic affliction, Spanish sentimental fiction plays out the consequences of the "lyric situation": thrown into a novellistic world, the lover psycho-analyzes his state of incessant recollection of an extremely powerful mnemonic image of his beloved. The rationale behind early sentimental fiction (Siervo libre de amor, Satira de infelice e felice vida, Triste Deleytacion) is the protagonists' struggle with, and triumph over, the symptoms of lovesickness and its sublimation in constant, altruistic love. Later works, like Grimalte y Gradissa , lay open the unredeemable outcome of hereos; Carcel de amor attempts vainly to present the protagonist as a heroic, courtly lover. Don Quijote's feigned passionate love for Dulcinea results from a lucid decision, which is bracketed in his folly. Associating Don Quijote with the Enlightenment episteme, it is the "unreason" within madness that is the target of parody and persecution.