ABSTRACT
Drawing on developments in the early modern discourse of lovesickness,2 I base my central claim on two underlying assumptions. First, that humoral theory in the early seventeenth century continues to be the dominant conceptual system in early modern medicine. Second, that this theory is a fluid, subtle, and contradictory discourse which is open to multiple influences and appropriations, both progressive and pernicious. Here, I want to focus on how, although humoral theory does not yet in the sixteenth and early seventeenth century circulate representations of bodies marked by essentialized ethnic, national, and racial difference, it provides the resources to begin to conceptualize such differences.
