AUTHOR-APPROVEDEdinburgh Critical Studies in Renaissance Culture
General Editor: Lorna Hutson
These original interpretations of Renaissance culture focus on literary texts in English and in a range of vernacular languages. They also deal with the reception and transformation of the Greco-Roman literary, political and intellectual heritage.
Don Quixote in the Archives:
Madness and Literature in Early Modern Spain
Dale Shuger
/A new reading of madness in /Don Quixote/ based on archival accounts of insanity/
Dale Shuger presents, from the records of the Spanish Inquisition, a social corpus of early modern madness that differs radically from the 'literary' madness hitherto studied by Cervantes critics. Drawing on over one hundred accounts of insanity defences, many of which contain statements from a wide social spectrum - housekeepers, nieces, doctors, and barbers - as well as the testimonies of the alleged madmen (and madwomen) themselves, Shuger argues that Cervantes's exploration of madness as experience is intimately linked to the questions about ethics, reason, will, and selfhood which unreason presented for early modern Spaniards.
In adapting, challenging, and transforming these discourses, /Don Quixote/ comes to investigate spaces of interiority, to confront the limitations of knowledge - of the self and the world - and to reflect on the social strategies for diagnosing and dealing with those we cannot understand. Shuger discovers an intimate connection between Cervantes's integration of this discourse of madness and his part in forging the new genre of the European novel.
Dale Shuger is a Professor of Early Modern Spanish Literature and History at Columbia University.

Acknowledgements; Note Concerning the Translation; Series Preface; Introduction; 1. Many Madnesses; 2. The Symptoms of Madness; 3. The Madman on the Road; 4. The Madman at Home; 5. Madness, the Mind, and the Novel; 6. Madness, Authority, and the Novel; Epilogue (second sally); Bibliography; Index.