Lovesickness is a common malady in British literature, but it is also an illness that has been perceived and diagnosed differently in different eras. The nineteenthcentury British novel incorporates a lovesickness that primarily affects women with physical symptoms, including fever, that may end in a female character's death. The fever of female lovesickness includes a delirium that allows a female character to play out the identity crisis she must feel at the loss of a significant relationship and possibly of her social status. Commonly conflated with a type of female madness, the nineteenthcentury novelists often focus less on the delirium and more on the physical symptoms of illness that affect a female character at the loss of love. These physical symptoms require physical care from other characters and often grant the heroine status and comfort. Jane Austen, Elizabeth Gaskell, and Charles Dickens all use subtle variations in lovesickness to identify the presence or absence of a female character's virtue. Jane Austen established lovesickness as a necessary experience for female characters, who choose only if they reveal or conceal their symptoms to a watchful public. Elizabeth Gaskell established both a comic socially constructed lovesickness in which a female character can participate if she is aware of popular culture and a spontaneous lovesickness that affects socially unaware female characters and leads to death. Charles Dickens establishes lovesickness as culturally pervasive by writing a female character who stages lovesickness for the purpose of causing pain to others and a female character who is immune to lovesickness and the rhetoric of love, yet is consistently spoken into others' love stories. Lovesickness becomes a barometer of the soul in several nineteenthcentury novels by which we read a heroine's virtue or lack of virtue and the depth of her loss.

This thesis examines the lovesickness or lovers' malady of Calisto and Melibea as a pathogenic condition (amor hereos, aegritudo amoris) in Fernando de Rojas' La Celestina. (1499). This study focuses on differing Mediaeval attitudes with respect to passionate love, mostly from the point of view of medical treatises but including specific theologians and moralists. The thesis presented as a medical vade mecum is organized in four chapters. / The introduction gives a brief overview of amor hereos and indicates the objectives of the thesis. Chapter one is devoted to the etiology of the sickness and locates the process in La Celestina. The second chapter analyses the symptoms of amor hereos and their manifestations in Calisto and Melibea. Having studied the symptoms, the third chapter is a diagnosis of the sickness suffered by the two main protagonists. The fourth chapter discusses the prognosis and the treatment recommended by the medical profession. Finally, the conclusion describes and compares the physical treatment recommended by medical writers in order to cure the amor hereos of Calisto and Melibea and to what extent their course of treatment agrees with that proposed by Celestina.

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Le présent travail est l'établissement minutieux, d'une anthologie non exhaustive, mais la plus représentative possible, des récits circonstanciés ou des allusions de connivence se rencontrant dans les textes de fiction, de morale ou de médecine, depuis l'Antiquité jusqu'à l'Âge classique, ayant pour sujet le motif légendaire des Amours d’ Antiochus et Stratonice. Cette légende prolifique a pour intérêt majeur d'utiliser les savoirs médico-moraux sur la souffrance amoureuse dans une perspective de fable théâtrale et mystificatrice, alliant l'imaginaire antique et ancien à l'histoire littéraire des narrations anecdotiques à usage exemplaire. L'analyse comparée du traitement du motif permet de mettre en lumière l'évolution conjointe de la psychologie de la maladie d'amour, de la poétique des exempla, et des réflexions menées sur les savoirs partagés et leur diffusion dans l'opinion éclairée, durant un millénaire. La longue durée, sur laquelle le corpus jamais encore réuni est examiné, tend à révéler une figure centrale de l'imaginaire collectif européen, celle de l'amoureux en souffrance, à l'origine des développements narratifs, poétiques et dramaturgiques les plus variés. L’étude s'épanouit dans une logique à la fois en diachronie et en synchronie : diachronie du passage du monde païen au monde chrétien, du monde antique au monde moderne, des temps des « légendes » à l'ère de la « raison » ; synchronie d'une narration assez simplement composée pour entrer dans la mémoire universelle, et suffisamment riche pour porter toute la complexité et les évolutions d'un thème majeur de l'Occident : la mélancolie d'amour. / The work herein is the careful establishment of an anthology, non-exhaustive yet as representative as possible, of circumstantial stories or connivance allusions occurring in fictional, moral, or medicine text from ancient times to the classical Age, dealing with the legendary motif of the Loves of Antiochus and Stratonice. This prolific legend has the major advantage of using medical-moral knowledge about love-sickness to feed a theatrical and mystifying fable, combining the ancient imaginary with the literary history of exemplary anecdotal narratives. The comparative analysis of the motif's treatment allows us to highlight the joint evolution of love-sickness psychology, poetic exempla, and reflections on the shared knowledge and its dissemination in enlightened opinion, over a millennium. This long term, over which this novel corpus is discussed, reveals a central figure in the European collective imagination, that of lovers in suffering, point of origin of varied narrative, poetic, and dramatic developments. The study flourishes in a logic both diachronic and synchronic: diachronic passage from the pagan world to the Christian world, from the ancient world to the modern world, from the time of "legends" to the age of "reason" ; synchrony on the other hand of a story simple enough to seep into universal memory, and nevertheless rich enough to bear all the complexity and evolutions of a major theme of the Occident: love melancholy.

This thesis adopts the medieval medical discourse on love melancholy to analyze the representation of erotic love in Keats¡¦s poetry and to the changes in his ideas concerning love. In medieval discourse on love melancholy, women are seen as demonic agents to seduce men. In the process of their seductions, these temptresses also use amatory magic and love philters to bewilder and to enthrall their ¡§games.¡¨ People who fall in love usually lose their minds, their senses, and their judgments. They appear obsessed and insane, which leads to weakness, absurdity, and mental obscurity. Many of Keats¡¦s poems depict lovesickness, such as ¡§Lamia¡¨ and ¡§La Belle Dame sans Merci.¡¨ There are evidences showing that when he was composing these poems, he was also reading medieval treaties on love melancholy, which suggests that he might to a great extent be influenced by medieval concepts on lovesickness and sexuality. The characters in these poems, furthermore, can be seen as representations of the medieval images of the ¡§agents of love,¡¦ who, usually female, seduce men and cause all kinds of symptoms of ¡§love.¡¨ Keats was influenced by medieval discourse on lovesickness not only in his poetry but also in his personal life. When he first fell in love with Fanny Brawne, seemed to act under the influence of the so-called ¡§love-sickness,¡¨ and he strived to escape from love. Nevertheless, his failure to cure himself of this ¡§disease¡¨ enabled him to perceive the restraining viewpoint of this medieval discourse in regard to being love sick. Realizing this restrictive rational ideology lurking behind the medieval ideas of love melancholy and sexuality, Keats changed his belief in lovesickness. With Lycius¡¦s accusation of Apollonius and the knight¡¦s aimless loitering, he satirizes in ¡§Lamia¡¨ and ¡§La Belle Dame sans Merci¡¨ the derogation of reason on lovesickness, while in ¡§the Ode on Melancholy¡¨ and ¡§To Autumn,¡¨ Keats represents melancholy in a way that differs from the discourse he has inherited. Instead of showing feminine beauty as threatening and haunting, he delineates it as giving a perplexing delight. Rather than sober male characters, he prefers and describes indecisive male characters in love who demonstrates qualities such as softness, capriciousness and uncertainty¡Xqualities usually associated with females. Keats came to realize that the female perplexing beauty is suppressed and disliked in a society dominated by men, and males were not allowed to express feminine traits and emotions. The emphasis on rationality in late-eighteenth century somewhat resembled the medieval times in that both emphasize male calmness and intelligence. However, experience enabled Keats to realize that, rather than singularly repel the feminizing symptoms aroused by love melancholy, it is healthier to accept both the female and male features demonstrated within a man. Emotional perturbation and temporary irrational passions are human emotions that should be permitted. Instead of running away from love, Keats with his insight into lovesickness cured his fear for lovesickness. The idea of medieval sexuality no longer haunted on Keats on his journey to love, but is criticized for its excessive rationality.

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