Lovesickness in 17th and 18th Century English Literature

(3 Credit Hours) · Undergraduate

What do “lovers” and “madmen” have in common? According to Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, it is a shared diagnosis of lovesickness; what Theseus describes as “seething brains” that have become overwhelmed by romantic imagination. Tracing this phenomenon across English literature of the 17th and 18th centuries, our class will examine the history of lovesickness and its portrayals in poetry, drama, mock-epic, letters, and the novel. Together, we will learn about how lovesickness in these texts interacts with broader thematic questions of romance, kinship, gender, religion, and power.