Becoming a good wife: Nature and habits in Paduan medical culture in the age of Shakespeare

Abstract

The Renaissance debate on the passions of the soul develops in an atmosphere of intellectual mediations that forges new anthropological codes for the social control of affections. This contribution focuses on some medical texts on passions, circulating in Padua during the sixteenth century, which attempt to answer, on theoretical and therapeutic levels, the questions raised by the confrontation between mores and temperamenta: is it possible to activate a process of domestication of the passions that could bring behavioural deviance within the norm? What are the boundaries of adequate moral or social conduct for a scolding young woman?