Melancholy and culture

"During the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, texts on melancholy began to circulate in Europe aimed at the general reading public and not purely for specialists in mental illness. The first book on melancholy written in vernacular language was the Libro de la melancholia by Spanish doctor Andres Velasquez. This book takes his work as a starting point from which to study the broad panorama of melancholy in Spain in the period and goes on to examine the importance of melancholy in Cervantes' Don Quixote and also examines the criticisms directed at Velasquez's work by Dr. Juan Huarte de San Juan in the Examen de ingenios para las ciencias (known in English as 'Triall of Wits')." "Roger Bartra's history explores the relation between culture and melancholy, using as his framework the notion that culture is not the antidote against the chaos of melancholy, or that the culture of melancholy can be studied in isolation; rather that he sees culture as melancholy, and melancholy as culture."--book jacket.