The subject of madness: An analysis of Ariosto's "Orlando Furioso" and Garzoni's "L'Hospedale de' pazzi incurabili"
Item
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Title
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The subject of madness: An analysis of Ariosto's "Orlando Furioso" and Garzoni's "L'Hospedale de' pazzi incurabili"
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Identifier
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AAI9997079
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identifier
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9997079
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Creator
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Calabritto, Monica.
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Contributor
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Adviser: Clare L. Carroll
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Date
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2001
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Language
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English
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Publisher
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City University of New York.
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Subject
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Literature, Comparative | Literature, Romance
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Abstract
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My dissertation analyzes how early modern genres, medical tradition and issues of gender shaped the way Ludovico Ariosto and Tomaso Garzoni perceived and interpreted madness. The comparison of the canonical Orlando Furioso (3d ed. 1532) with the lesser known L'hospedale de' pazzi incurabili (1586) suggests that a change occurred in the perception and representation of madness and that Ariosto's and Garzoni's texts bookend this development. Ariosto elaborates elements belonging to the medieval tradition of madness---the classification of passions and the medical and literary notions of amor hereos. Garzoni reworks elements reflecting changes that occurred in the second half of the sixteenth century: the growing availability of the encyclopedic and commonplace genres and of the treatises on emblems and imprese thanks to the print market, the new values of the Catholic Reformation and the increased importance of medical observation. This change in the representation of madness is rooted in a long-standing medical tradition that had not substantially changed since Hippocrates and Galen.;My analysis focuses on the complex connection between the atmosphere of increasing normalization imposed by the cultural ideology of the period and the treatment of madness in Ariosto's and Garzoni's texts.;Through the representation of madness, the authors address issues concerning agency and selfhood. They adopt rhetorical strategies which depend on the hybrid generic dimension of the texts and on the authors' perception of gender and subject. Ariosto identifies madness with an excess of passion and blurs the traditional distinction between masculine and feminine love madness. Ariosto's use of parody as a rhetorical counterpoint to the generic contamination occurring on the text's structural and narrative level allows for a definition of the notions of subject and gender that is dynamic and pluralistic.;Garzoni juxtaposes literary genres and uses medical and encyclopedic language to classify masculine madness, while exploiting the impresa to represent feminine madness. Garzoni's choice of a hospital recalls spaces of treatment for mad people created throughout early modern Europe. The dissertation investigates the connection between Garzoni's fictional hospital and the methods of treatment and seclusion of mad patients in Italian hospitals and the medical tradition.
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Type
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dissertation
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Source
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PQT Legacy CUNY.xlsx
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degree
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Ph.D.
