Images in Mind: Lovesickness, Spanish Sentimental Fiction and Don Quijote (review)

This study of the Spanish sentimental romance (with a short conclusion relating it to Don Quijote) is an excellent guide to the significant work done on the genre in the second half of the twentieth century. Folger engages with the notions of amor heros (love-sickness) and philocaptio (love-bewitchment), and provides an exhaustive investigation of these topics in relation to Juan Rodríguez del Padrón's Siervo libre de amor, the Condestable don Pedro de Portugal's Sátira de infelice e felice vida, Triste deleytación, Juan de Flores' Grimalte y Gradissa, Diego de San Pedro's Cárcel de amor, Nicolás Núnez's continuation of the latter, and Don Quijote.

Folger's really valuable insight and contribution to the lengthy critical debate on the topic of illness of love is to discuss the pivotal role of memory in the process. He distinguishes between medieval and modern notions of psychiatry and the mind and, setting out from Villalobos's definition of lovesickness as 'un género de locura que se llama alienación', he shows how love obsession depends on the incessant recollection of a mnemonic image, which is a form of philocaptio. This approach is particularly effective and convincing in his discussion of the two key texts of the genre, Siervo and Cárcel.

In Siervo the heart and memory are equated, and the suicide of Ardanlier conflates the themes of love, loyalty, and memory. Ardanlier commits suicide rather than betray the memory of Liessa with Yrene, whom he also loves. Synderesis in the frame narrative is equated with Memory as a sort of superego which corrects the malfunction of the psychic faculties, and which triumphs over amor heros in the author's psyche.

Folger sees the subsequent shift from autobiographical introspection to third-person psychoanalysis in the later sentimental romances as an effect of the arrival of printing. In the case of Cárcel, the enigmatic female image carried by the knight-wild man Deseo is interpreted as the mnemonic image of the beloved, the philocaptio which causes the amor heros. In the allegorical Jail of Love, Reason condemns the lover to death, and Memory offers to be the executioner. The Jail itself is a mnemonic construction allied to the medieval art of memory, that is to say, remembering things by placing them within an architectural construction. The theme of the work is the clash between pure love and its carnal objective.

Folger has many important insights into the genre, and gives interested scholars much food for thought and for further discussion.