Description
Book SynopsisThe Politics of Emotion explores the intersection of powerful emotional stateslove, melancholy, grief, and madnesswith gender and political power on the Iberian Peninsula from the Middle Ages to the early modern period. Using an array of sourcesliterary texts, medical treatises, and archival documentsNuria Silleras-Fernandez focuses on three royal women: Isabel of Portugal (14281496), queen-consort of Castile; Isabel of Aragon (14701498), queen-consort of Portugal; and Juana of Castile (14791555), queen of Castile and its empire. Each of these women was perceived by their contemporaries as having gone mad as a result of excessive grief, and all three were related to Isabel the Catholic (14511504), queen of Castile and a woman lauded in her time as a paragon of reason.
Through the lives and experiences of these royal women and the observations, judgments, and machinations of their families, entourages, and circles of writers, chronicles, courtiers, moralist
