French Literature Reviews - 2026

The Secret Wound. Love-Melancholy and Early Modern Romance
Comparative and World Literature

Marion A. WELLS, The Secret Wound. Love-Melancholy and Early Modern Romance, Stanford University Press, 2007, 384 p.
ISBN 0804750467

SUMMARY

This book offers a fresh interpretation of early modern romance through the lens of contemporary historical concepts of the mind, specifically the medical tradition of love-melancholy. The author argues that the clinical profile of the melancholic lover provides a crucial framework for understanding the defining tropes of the genre: narrative deferral, epistemological uncertainty, and the relentless pursuit of an elusive, phantasmal beloved. Unlike many recent studies of romance, this work establishes a rigorous historical foundation for exploring the psychological architecture of the genre. Wells begins by tracing the evolution of the medical condition—known in the Latin West as amor hereos (lovesickness)—from its origins in Greek and Arabic medicine through its integration into the Latin medical tradition. Drawing upon this rich historical material, the study examines three major early modern epics: Ariosto's Orlando Furioso, Tasso's Gerusalemme Liberata, and Spenser's The Faerie Queene, concluding with a brief reflection on the enduring legacy of this literary and medical tradition for Romanticism. Ultimately, the interdisciplinary scope of this study enables the author to approach the central critical problem of early modern subjectivity in profoundly innovative ways.

CONTENTS

Acknowledgments

Introduction: Love-Melancholy and Early Modern Romance
1. From Amor hereos to Love-Melancholy: A Medico-Literary History
2. Vulnus caecum: The Secret Wound of Love-Melancholy
3. Solvite me: Epic, Romance, and the Poetics of Melancholy in the Orlando Furioso
4. Il primo error: Love-Melancholy and Romance in the Gerusalemme Liberata
5. Rewriting Romance: Arthur's "Secret Wound" and the "Lamentable Lay" of Elegy
6. "The Love-sicke hart": Female Love-Melancholy and the Romance Quest
Conclusion: La Belle Dame Sans Merci: Romance and the Dream of "Language Strange"

Notes
Bibliography
Index

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Marion A. Wells is Associate Professor of English at Middlebury College.

The intersection of early modern literature and medical history forms a rich field of inquiry for scholars examining how premodern psychological concepts shaped narrative forms. The medical tradition of lovesickness, or amor hereos, developed across Greek, Arabic and Latin traditions, offering physicians a framework for diagnosing the physical and mental toll of passion. Literary historians frequently investigate how narrative structures in Renaissance epics mirror contemporary understandings of the mind, emotion and interiority. Readers interested in the history of medicine and early modern narrative traditions may find this study relevant to their pursuits.

This volume engages with major works of the Renaissance epic tradition, including Orlando Furioso, Gerusalemme Liberata and The Faerie Queene. By tracing the evolution of the concept of love-melancholy, the study connects clinical histories of the mind with the formal characteristics of romance, such as narrative deferral and epistemological uncertainty. The analysis extends to considerations of female love-melancholy and traces the legacy of these motifs into the Romantic period, offering a sustained exploration of early modern subjectivity through an interdisciplinary methodological framework.