All the terms in the title of the plenary session, “Recent Work in Renaissance Studies on Psychology,” at the Renaissance Society of America's 1991 annual meeting (where this paper was first delivered) are matters of conflict and debate. In this discussion I shall examine current debates about the “Renaissance,” “psychology,” and “madness” to account for the paucity and insufficiency of current work on early modern madness by historians and literary critics and theorists, to raise issues about current trends in Renaissance studies, and to elicit new kinds of scholarship.
