Medieval sensibilities : a history of emotions in the middle ages
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Bibliographic Information
Medieval sensibilities : a history of emotions in the middle ages
Polity Press, c2018
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- Other Title
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Sensible Moyen Âge : une histoire des émotions dans l'Occident médiéval
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Note
Includes bibliographical references (p. 298-338) and index
Description and Table of Contents
Description
What do we know of the emotional life of the Middle Ages? Though a long-neglected subject, a multitude of sources - spiritual and secular literature, iconography, chronicles, as well as theological and medical works - provide clues to the central role emotions played in medieval society.
In this work, historians Damien Boquet and Piroska Nagy delve into a rich variety of texts and images to reveal the many and nuanced experiences of emotion during the Middle Ages - from the demonstrative shame of a saint to a nobleman's fear of embarrassment, from the enthusiasm of a crusading band to the fear of a town threatened by the approach of war or plague. Boquet and Nagy show how these outbursts of joy and pain, while universal expressions, must be understood within the specific context of medieval society. During the Middle Ages, a Christian model of affectivity was formed in the 'laboratory' of the monasteries, one which gradually seeped into wider society, interacting with the sensibilities of courtly culture and other forms of expression.
Bouqet and Nagy bring a thousand years of history to life, demonstrating how the study of emotions in medieval society can also allow us to understand better our own social outlooks and customs.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgements
Foreword
Introduction
Chapter 1: The Christianization of Emotion (third to fifth centuries)
The theology of emotion
An emotional God
God's wrath: a proof of his existence
God is love
Passion incarnate
The anthropology of emotion
The Christian passions
Augustine: father of medieval affectivity
Sin and punishment
A new order of humanity
Chapter 2: The City of Desire: The Monastic Laboratory
The desert: from the care of the body to the care of the soul
The bad thoughts of Evagrius of Pontus
Cassian and the foundations of community: from charity to virtuous friendship
Affective conversion in Western monasticism
Monastic norms for converting the emotions
Gregory the Great and sacrificial emotion
Chapter 3: Emotions for a Christian Society: The Frankish World (fifth to tenth centuries)
The early Middle Ages: a fragmented age?
Emotional bonds
Amicitia / inimicitia
And what of women in all of this?
The rise of heavenly emotions
New forms of lay devotion
Moral teaching
The Carolingian vision of society: unity in love
Chapter 4: The Zenith of Monastic Affection
The origins of affective renewal
A compassionate eremitism
The privilege of love: fraternal affection amongst an ascetic elite
The affective reform of monasticism and the Church.
Friendship as the practice of conversion: Anselm of Canterbury
The expansion of love's domain
Passionate charity as spiritual nature
Ordering the emotions
Sensitive pieties
The world as horizon: spiritual friendship and fraternal charity in the twelfth century
Chapter 5: The Ethics and Aesthetics of Aristocratic Emotions in Feudal Society (eleventh to thirteenth centuries)
The emotional order of feudal society
A society of spectacle
Revolutions of love
The loving couple and its twin
The naturalization of love
The impossible innamoramento of same-sex lovers
Literary emotions and aristocratic values
Epic emotions
Looking upon another, another looking upon oneself: jealousy and shame
Chapter 6: The Emotive Nature of Man (eleventh to thirteenth centuries)
A prelude: the controversy over the 'first movements of the soul'
Accidents of the soul and of the heart: the medical science of emotion
The emotional mechanism
Emotions and healthy living
Remedies for melancholy
Monastic anthropology in the twelfth century: the challenges of a spiritual psychology
Affect as a power of the soul
For better or for worse: the affective union of body and soul
Towards a university science of the passions of the soul: the thirteenth century
Emotions and individuals between psychology and morality: the early thirteenth century
John of La Rochelle: the turning point of scholastic anthropology
Thomas Aquinas: a psychological science of the passions
Chapter 7: The Politics of Princely Emotion (twelfth to fifteenth centuries)
Sovereign emotion
From the political body to the princely body, and back again.
The prince in the mirror of his emotions
The emotional portrait of St. Louis
Governing through emotion
Ira regis
Anger as verdict: the murder of Thomas Beckett.
Casting shame and being ashamed
Negotiating emotions
Sovereignty and the transformation of political emotion: the example of friendship
Emotion as a political event
'To cry is to govern'
Chapter 8: The Mystical Conquest of Emotion (thirteenth to fifteenth centuries)
The cultural roots of 'affective mysticism'
The Gregorian renewal of theology and the anthropology of religious practices
Religious fervour: a collective emotion
Francis of Assisi and the revolution of embodied emotion
The experience of pious women
Vision, imagination and embodiment: paths towards union with the suffering of Christ
The sacramental 'emotive': the emotional navigation of mystics
The emotional incarnation of the sacred: gender and society
Epilogue: the devotio moderna and the softening of affective piety
Chapter 9: Common Emotion (thirteenth to fifteenth centuries)
The public sharing of performative emotions
Emotion and violence: popular movements
Settling conflicts through the sharing of emotion
Emotions and social identities
When emotions expressed communities
Excluding through emotion: fomenting hatred
The 'pastoral of emotions'
The scholastic theory of emotional education
Emotional rhetoric: the manufacture of laughter and shame
The scripting of emotional persuasion
Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
Figure credits
Index
by "Nielsen BookData"
