Galen’s theory of black bile is strongly influenced by his aim to bring together a wide range of material from the work of different physicians and philosophers that begins with Hippocrates. This has caused there to be a large amount of inconsistencies in his writing on black bile. There has been a tendency in modern scholarship either to try to resolve these inconsistencies or to ignore them completely. In many cases there has been an emphasis on the definition of black bile in the Hippocratic On the Nature of Man as the most important basis for understanding Galen’s characterisation of black bile. My analysis will challenge this assumption concerning the dominance of On the Nature of Man for Galen’s use of black bile in his explanation of health and disease in the body. I shall show that an investigation of the way that Galen characterises the physical properties and function of black bile reveals that it is better to understand his use of this humour in terms of his attempt to bring material from a wide range of authorities together to support the arguments that he presents in his treatises. Galen defines black bile as three distinct types of substance that differ in physical properties in order to account for the different ways that this humour is characterised and defined in the various medical sources that he draws upon. However, he is unable to produce a theory of black bile without inconsistencies relating to a number of issues that include such factors as his naming of the different forms of black bile and his concept of authenticity of texts in the Hippocratic Corpus. Galen’s strategy is to make his audience believe that there is a comprehensive and well-defined theory of black bile that originates in the work of Hippocrates and was followed by certain physicians and philosophers afterwards. But in reality this is just a façade and Galen defines and uses black bile in many different and inconsistent ways for his arguments and refutations that cannot always be reconciled with the content of his sources.

Esta dissertação se dedica a estudar qual o lugar dos humores no pensamento republicano de Nicolau Maquiavel. Entendendo por humores os grupos de cidadãos que constituem o corpo político grandes/nobres e povo , bem como os desejos e apetites próprios de cada um destes dois grupos, este estudo pretende mostrar como o autor florentino elabora seu pensamento republicano a partir dos conflitos civis, que é efeito da relação entre eles. Partimos da investigação do significado do termo humor na medicina antiga e renascentista, para tentar compreender a apropriação que Maquiavel faz para pensar a dinâmica entre os grupos políticos da cidade. Em seguida, dedica-se a compreender como o florentino elabora o modelo romano, isto é, como justifica a grandiosidade da tumultuosa república, sobretudo a partir dos desejos e apetites dos grupos políticos e das instituições que se originam dos conflitos entre eles. Por último, a análise da decadência romana apresenta a razão do funcionamento deturpado das instituições e o uso de vias extraordinárias para a resolução de conflitos por parte dos grupos políticos. Observa-se que Maquiavel apresenta, a partir da análise da corrupção, as condições necessárias para a fundação de uma república, bem como os efeitos da ambição por bens e do excesso do desejo popular por liberdade que podem, também, provocar a irrupção do processo de corrupção. Logo, este trabalho tenta pensar o modelo republicano de Maquiavel a partir da chave humoral, o que acaba colocando em destaque tanto a relação entre seus grupos internos, como as paixões que os movem. / This dissertation is dedicated to studying what is the place of the humours in Nicolo Machiavelils republican thought. Understanding by humours citizen groups which constitute the political body grandi/nobles and the people , as well as their own desires and appetites, this study aims to show how the Florentine author elaborates his republican thought from the civic conflicts. We start from the investigation of the term humours in Renaissances and ancient medicine to better comprehend Machiavellis appropriation of it to analyze the dynamics between the citys political groups. From then on the idea is to perceive how our Florentine builds up the Roman model, that is, how does he justify the grandeur of the tumultuous republic, especially accounting for the political groups desires and appetites and the institutions which follow from their conflicts. Finally, a study about Roman decadence offers the reasons for the perverted functioning of its institutions and the resulting use of extraordinary ways for conflict resolution. Machiavellis analysis of the corruption shows what conditions are necessary for the foundation of a republic, as well as the effects of property ambition and the popular desire for freedom both can start a corruptive process. Thus, this work offers a reflection on the Machiavellian republic model through its humours, highlighting the relationship between its internal groups and the passions driving each of them.

Esta dissertação se dedica a estudar qual o lugar dos humores no pensamento republicano de Nicolau Maquiavel. Entendendo por humores os grupos de cidadãos que constituem o corpo político grandes/nobres e povo , bem como os desejos e apetites próprios de cada um destes dois grupos, este estudo pretende mostrar como o autor florentino elabora seu pensamento republicano a partir dos conflitos civis, que é efeito da relação entre eles. Partimos da investigação do significado do termo humor na medicina antiga e renascentista, para tentar compreender a apropriação que Maquiavel faz para pensar a dinâmica entre os grupos políticos da cidade. Em seguida, dedica-se a compreender como o florentino elabora o modelo romano, isto é, como justifica a grandiosidade da tumultuosa república, sobretudo a partir dos desejos e apetites dos grupos políticos e das instituições que se originam dos conflitos entre eles. Por último, a análise da decadência romana apresenta a razão do funcionamento deturpado das instituições e o uso de vias extraordinárias para a resolução de conflitos por parte dos grupos políticos. Observa-se que Maquiavel apresenta, a partir da análise da corrupção, as condições necessárias para a fundação de uma república, bem como os efeitos da ambição por bens e do excesso do desejo popular por liberdade que podem, também, provocar a irrupção do processo de corrupção. Logo, este trabalho tenta pensar o modelo republicano de Maquiavel a partir da chave humoral, o que acaba colocando em destaque tanto a relação entre seus grupos internos, como as paixões que os movem. / This dissertation is dedicated to studying what is the place of the humours in Nicolo Machiavelils republican thought. Understanding by humours citizen groups which constitute the political body grandi/nobles and the people , as well as their own desires and appetites, this study aims to show how the Florentine author elaborates his republican thought from the civic conflicts. We start from the investigation of the term humours in Renaissances and ancient medicine to better comprehend Machiavellis appropriation of it to analyze the dynamics between the citys political groups. From then on the idea is to perceive how our Florentine builds up the Roman model, that is, how does he justify the grandeur of the tumultuous republic, especially accounting for the political groups desires and appetites and the institutions which follow from their conflicts. Finally, a study about Roman decadence offers the reasons for the perverted functioning of its institutions and the resulting use of extraordinary ways for conflict resolution. Machiavellis analysis of the corruption shows what conditions are necessary for the foundation of a republic, as well as the effects of property ambition and the popular desire for freedom both can start a corruptive process. Thus, this work offers a reflection on the Machiavellian republic model through its humours, highlighting the relationship between its internal groups and the passions driving each of them.

Mon projet de thèse démontre le rôle essentiel que tient la mélancolie dans les comédies de Shakespeare. J’analyse sa présence au travers de multiples pièces, des farces initiales, en passant par les comédies romantiques, jusqu’aux tragicomédies qui ponctuent les dernières années de sa carrière. Je dénote ainsi sa métamorphose au sein du genre comique, passant d’une représentation individuelle se rapportant à la théorie des humeurs, à un spectre émotionnel se greffant aux structures théâtrales dans lesquelles il évolue. Je suggère que cette progression s’apparent au cycle de joie et de tristesse qui forme la façon par laquelle Shakespeare dépeint l’émotion sur scène. Ma thèse délaisse donc les théories sur la mélancolie se rapportant aux humeurs et à la psychanalyse, afin de repositionner celle-ci dans un créneau shakespearien, comique, et historique, où le mot « mélancolie » évoque maintes définitions sur un plan social, scientifique, et surtout théâtrale. Suite à un bref aperçu de sa prévalence en Angleterre durant la Renaissance lors de mon introduction, les chapitres suivants démontrent la surabondance de mélancolie dans les comédies de Shakespeare. A priori, j’explore les façons par lesquelles elle est développée au travers de La Comedie des Erreurs et Peines d’Amour Perdues. Les efforts infructueux des deux pièces à se débarrasser de leur mélancolie par l’entremise de couplage hétérosexuels indique le malaise que celle-ci transmet au style comique de Shakespere et ce, dès ces premiers efforts de la sorte. Le troisième chapitre soutient que Beaucoup de Bruit pour Rien et Le Marchand de Venise offrent des exemples parangons du phénomène par lequel des personnages mélancoliques refusent de tempérer leurs comportements afin de se joindre aux célébrations qui clouent chaque pièce. La mélancolie que l’on retrouve ici génère une ambiguïté émotionnelle qui complique sa présence au sein du genre comique. Le chapitre suivant identifie Comme il vous plaira et La Nuit des Rois comme l’apogée du traitement comique de la mélancolie entrepris par Shakespeare. Je suggère que ces pièces démontrent l’instant où les caractérisations corporelles de la mélancolie ne sont plus de mise pour le style dramatique vers lequel Shakespeare se tourne progressivement. Le dernier chapitre analyse donc Périclès, prince de Tyr et Le Conte d’Hiver afin de démontrer que, dans la dernière phase de sa carrière théâtrale, Shakespeare a recours aux taxonomies comiques élucidées ultérieurement afin de créer une mélancolie spectrale qui s’attardent au-delà des pièces qu’elle hante. Cette caractérisation se rapporte aux principes de l’art impressionniste, puisqu’elle promeut l’abandon de la précision au niveau du texte pour favoriser les réponses émotionnelles que les pièces véhiculent. Finalement, ma conclusion démontre que Les Deux Nobles Cousins représente la culmination du développement de la mélancolie dans les comédies de Shakespeare, où l’incarnation spectrale du chapitre précèdent atteint son paroxysme. La nature collaborative de la pièce suggère également un certain rituel transitif entre la mélancolie dite Shakespearienne et celle développée par John Fletcher à l’intérieure de la même pièce. / My dissertation argues for a reconsideration of melancholy as an integral component of Shakespearean comedy. I analyse its presence across the comic canon, from early farcical plays through mature comic works, to the late romances that conclude Shakespeare’s career. In doing so, I denote its shift from an individual, humoural characterization to a more spectral incarnation that engrains itself in the dramatic fabric of the plays it inhabits. Ultimately, its manifestation purports to the cyclical nature of emotions and the mixture of mirth and sadness that the aforementioned late plays put forth. The thesis repositions Shakespearean melancholy away from humoural, psychoanalytical and other theoretical frameworks and towards an early modern context, where the term “melancholy” channels a plethora of social, scientific, and dramatic meanings. After a brief overview of the prevalence of melancholy in early modern England, the following chapters attest to the pervasiveness of melancholy within Shakespeare’s comic corpus, suggesting that, rather than a mere foil to the spirits of mirth and revelry, it proves elemental to comic structures as an agent of dramatic progression that fundamentally alters its generic make-up. I initially consider the ways in which melancholy is developed in The Comedy of Errors and Love’s Labor’s Lost, as an isolated condition, easily dismissible by what I refer to as the symmetrical structure of comic resolution. In both plays, I suggest, the failure to completely eradicate melancholy translates into highly ambiguous comic conclusions that pave the way for subsequent comic works, where melancholy’s presence grows increasingly cumbersome. Chapter three reads Much Ado about Nothing and The Merchant of Venice as prime dramatic examples of the phenomenon by which prominent comic characters not only fail to offer a clear cause for their overwhelming melancholy, but refuse to mitigate it for the benefit of the plays at hand. The melancholy found here creates emotional loose ends from which a sense of malaise that will take full effect in later comedies emanates. In the next chapter, As You Like It and Twelfth Night are held as a landmark in Shakespeare’s treatment of comic melancholy. The chapter suggests that these plays complete the break from individual melancholic characterization, which no longer seem suitable to the comic style towards which Shakespeare progressively turns. Consequently, the final chapter undertakes an analysis of Pericles and The Winter’s Tale to demonstrate the fact that, in his concluding dramatic phase, Shakespeare returns to the comic taxonomies of melancholy in order to foster more forceful, lingering emotional impacts as a form of dramatic impressionism, a relinquishing of details in favour of more powerful emotional responses. In a brief coda, I read The Two Noble Kinsmen as the culmination of the dramatic treatment in melancholy in Shakespeare, where the spectral wistfulness that characterized the late plays reaches a breaking point. I suggest that the play bears witness to a passing of the torch, as it were, between the Shakespearean dramatization of melancholy and the one propounded by Fletcher, which was to become the norm within subsequent seventeenth-century tragicomic works.

Mon projet de thèse démontre le rôle essentiel que tient la mélancolie dans les comédies de Shakespeare. J’analyse sa présence au travers de multiples pièces, des farces initiales, en passant par les comédies romantiques, jusqu’aux tragicomédies qui ponctuent les dernières années de sa carrière. Je dénote ainsi sa métamorphose au sein du genre comique, passant d’une représentation individuelle se rapportant à la théorie des humeurs, à un spectre émotionnel se greffant aux structures théâtrales dans lesquelles il évolue. Je suggère que cette progression s’apparent au cycle de joie et de tristesse qui forme la façon par laquelle Shakespeare dépeint l’émotion sur scène. Ma thèse délaisse donc les théories sur la mélancolie se rapportant aux humeurs et à la psychanalyse, afin de repositionner celle-ci dans un créneau shakespearien, comique, et historique, où le mot « mélancolie » évoque maintes définitions sur un plan social, scientifique, et surtout théâtrale. Suite à un bref aperçu de sa prévalence en Angleterre durant la Renaissance lors de mon introduction, les chapitres suivants démontrent la surabondance de mélancolie dans les comédies de Shakespeare. A priori, j’explore les façons par lesquelles elle est développée au travers de La Comedie des Erreurs et Peines d’Amour Perdues. Les efforts infructueux des deux pièces à se débarrasser de leur mélancolie par l’entremise de couplage hétérosexuels indique le malaise que celle-ci transmet au style comique de Shakespere et ce, dès ces premiers efforts de la sorte. Le troisième chapitre soutient que Beaucoup de Bruit pour Rien et Le Marchand de Venise offrent des exemples parangons du phénomène par lequel des personnages mélancoliques refusent de tempérer leurs comportements afin de se joindre aux célébrations qui clouent chaque pièce. La mélancolie que l’on retrouve ici génère une ambiguïté émotionnelle qui complique sa présence au sein du genre comique. Le chapitre suivant identifie Comme il vous plaira et La Nuit des Rois comme l’apogée du traitement comique de la mélancolie entrepris par Shakespeare. Je suggère que ces pièces démontrent l’instant où les caractérisations corporelles de la mélancolie ne sont plus de mise pour le style dramatique vers lequel Shakespeare se tourne progressivement. Le dernier chapitre analyse donc Périclès, prince de Tyr et Le Conte d’Hiver afin de démontrer que, dans la dernière phase de sa carrière théâtrale, Shakespeare a recours aux taxonomies comiques élucidées ultérieurement afin de créer une mélancolie spectrale qui s’attardent au-delà des pièces qu’elle hante. Cette caractérisation se rapporte aux principes de l’art impressionniste, puisqu’elle promeut l’abandon de la précision au niveau du texte pour favoriser les réponses émotionnelles que les pièces véhiculent. Finalement, ma conclusion démontre que Les Deux Nobles Cousins représente la culmination du développement de la mélancolie dans les comédies de Shakespeare, où l’incarnation spectrale du chapitre précèdent atteint son paroxysme. La nature collaborative de la pièce suggère également un certain rituel transitif entre la mélancolie dite Shakespearienne et celle développée par John Fletcher à l’intérieure de la même pièce. / My dissertation argues for a reconsideration of melancholy as an integral component of Shakespearean comedy. I analyse its presence across the comic canon, from early farcical plays through mature comic works, to the late romances that conclude Shakespeare’s career. In doing so, I denote its shift from an individual, humoural characterization to a more spectral incarnation that engrains itself in the dramatic fabric of the plays it inhabits. Ultimately, its manifestation purports to the cyclical nature of emotions and the mixture of mirth and sadness that the aforementioned late plays put forth. The thesis repositions Shakespearean melancholy away from humoural, psychoanalytical and other theoretical frameworks and towards an early modern context, where the term “melancholy” channels a plethora of social, scientific, and dramatic meanings. After a brief overview of the prevalence of melancholy in early modern England, the following chapters attest to the pervasiveness of melancholy within Shakespeare’s comic corpus, suggesting that, rather than a mere foil to the spirits of mirth and revelry, it proves elemental to comic structures as an agent of dramatic progression that fundamentally alters its generic make-up. I initially consider the ways in which melancholy is developed in The Comedy of Errors and Love’s Labor’s Lost, as an isolated condition, easily dismissible by what I refer to as the symmetrical structure of comic resolution. In both plays, I suggest, the failure to completely eradicate melancholy translates into highly ambiguous comic conclusions that pave the way for subsequent comic works, where melancholy’s presence grows increasingly cumbersome. Chapter three reads Much Ado about Nothing and The Merchant of Venice as prime dramatic examples of the phenomenon by which prominent comic characters not only fail to offer a clear cause for their overwhelming melancholy, but refuse to mitigate it for the benefit of the plays at hand. The melancholy found here creates emotional loose ends from which a sense of malaise that will take full effect in later comedies emanates. In the next chapter, As You Like It and Twelfth Night are held as a landmark in Shakespeare’s treatment of comic melancholy. The chapter suggests that these plays complete the break from individual melancholic characterization, which no longer seem suitable to the comic style towards which Shakespeare progressively turns. Consequently, the final chapter undertakes an analysis of Pericles and The Winter’s Tale to demonstrate the fact that, in his concluding dramatic phase, Shakespeare returns to the comic taxonomies of melancholy in order to foster more forceful, lingering emotional impacts as a form of dramatic impressionism, a relinquishing of details in favour of more powerful emotional responses. In a brief coda, I read The Two Noble Kinsmen as the culmination of the dramatic treatment in melancholy in Shakespeare, where the spectral wistfulness that characterized the late plays reaches a breaking point. I suggest that the play bears witness to a passing of the torch, as it were, between the Shakespearean dramatization of melancholy and the one propounded by Fletcher, which was to become the norm within subsequent seventeenth-century tragicomic works.

The comedies of John Dryden, Thomas Shadwell, and Aphra Behn were equally well-received by Restoration audiences, yet each dramatist professes divergent dramatic theories and poetic goals. In prefatory material to their plays, Shadwell insists a dramatist’s duty is to depict virtue rewarded and vice punished, Behn rejects the idea that comic drama might influence morals or manners, and Dryden maintains that his only goal is to please the audience, despite his dull conversation and lack of wit. A comparison between the playwrights’ dramatic theory and their most popular comedies of the 1668-77 decade indicates that none of them represent with any accuracy their own (or others’) work. Shadwell abandons his didactic goals in pursuit of approbation and income, while Behn unswervingly attacks social issues prevalent in a patriarchal society. Dryden’s comedies—witty and fast-paced despite his protestations—also address weaknesses in the patriarchal system and condemn the commodification of marriage.