Malinconia e metodo (in margine a "La malinconia. Dal monaco medioevale al poeta crepuscolare", a cura di R. Gigliuccci)

The note offers insights into the important issues involved in the book cited in the title. It offers an alternative interpretation of the pseudo-Aristotelian concept of melancholy (i.e. of the text in Problem 30.1) and its impact on Petrarch’s sonnet n. 35; Cicero’s critique of the Aristotelian melancholy contained in the Tusculanae is examined, and this is followed by the influence of the contrast between the ataractic solitude of the Stoic sage and the loneliness produced by the passions of the melancholic on the cultural tradition of the Middle Ages. Finally, the late Nineteenth-century conception of the melancholy writer as a destructive, antisocial, and “unproductive” intellectual is investigated.