Avatars in French Literature and the French Theatre from Antiquity to the 18th Century.

Contents :
Introduction. The Marriage of Theatre and Melancholy
1) Don Gormas' blood and Junie's eyes. Legal, medical and erotic imaginings of ocular contamination.
2) Lucinde's moods. From Lovesickness to Erotic Melancholy
3) Melancholia. The Four Gospels of the Black Bile
4) The Folly of the Wise : Melancholia in All of Its Forms
5) Delirium's Cure. Of a Shadow Theatre
6) Catharsis and Melancholy. Redemption through Literature
7) Melancholy, Sorcery and Possession. The Psychogenesis of Autosuggestion
8) Molière and Melancholy. An Anatomy of Comic Folly

Patrick Dandrey, who is a professor at Université de Paris-Sorbonne, has written some twenty books and over a hundred articles on 17th-century French literature. A leading expert on Molière and La Fontaine, he is the President of the Société des Amis de Jean de La Fontaine and the chief Editor of Le Fablier magazine.