LAUSR

This research addresses the origins of a prototype repeatedly present in literature from the eighteenth century to the present, that of the melancholic character. His romantic affiliation is traced in the work of Goethe, Senancourt, Constant, Jacopo Ortis and Leopardi and it is analyzed in detail how this character is embodied in a character in the trilogy Los gozos y las sombras (1957–1962) of the Spanish writer of the century XX Gonzalo Torrente Ballester. We refer to the psychologist Carlos Deza, a psychiatrist trained in Germany who returns to his native Galician village of Pueblanueva del Conde, where his family, especially his aunt Mariana, has prepared for him a destiny of patriarch and feudal lord that is incapable of comply because of his apathy. The character concentrates all the elements of the romantic prototype of the melancholic: incessant mental activity, analysis of the thoughts and actions of the other characters, self-contemplation of their pain, dedication to intellectual activity, indecision and inability to action and moral skepticism.