ABSTRACT
This book adopts a cognitive-historicist approach in order to explore the cognitive universes created by Cervantes, as well as the ideas that made them possible: the notions and beliefs about the mind that circulated in early modern Europe, propelled by thinkers such as Juan Luis Vives, Juan Huarte de San Juan, Oliva Sabuco, Andrés Laguna, Andrés Velásquez, Marsilio Ficino, and Gómez Pereira, in addition to Cervantes himself. The editors bring together humanists and scientists and, more specifically, researchers who have a consistent record of interdisciplinary research on the topic at hand: Cervantes scholars who have explored his work in relation to cognitive theories as well as Spanish medical doctors who have amply investigated early modern medicine and psychology in relation to Cervantes, showcasing how scholars who put literary and scientific discourses in dialogue can help us deepen our knowledge of Cervantes’s inquiry into the mind. Readers will find in this volume chapters that integrate diverse types of sources (philosophical and medical treatises, natural histories, rhetoric manuals, pharmacopoeias, etc.) alongside Cervantes’s works, to examine themes and areas such as emotion, human development, animal vs. human consciousness, pathologies of the mind, and mind-altering substances.
