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Approaches to emotion in Middle English literature

Source : Manchester University Press / The Medieval Review

Carolyne Larrington, Approaches to emotion in Middle English literature, Manchester University Press, 2024

Over the last twenty-five years, the ‘history of emotion’ field has become one of the most dynamic and productive areas for humanities research. This designation, and the marked leadership of historians in the field, has had the unlooked-for consequence of sidelining literature – in particular secular literature – as evidence-source and object of emotion study. Secular literature, whether fable, novel, fantasy or romance, has been understood as prone to exaggeration, hyperbole, and thus as an unreliable indicator of the emotions of the past.

The aim of this book is to decentre history of emotion research and asks new questions, ones that can be answered by literary scholars, using literary texts as sources: how do literary texts understand and depict emotion and, crucially, how do they generate emotion in their audiences – those who read them or hear them read or performed?

Critique – The Medieval Review

The study of medieval emotions is a garden that continues to bloom lavishly, but it also bristles with theoretical concepts. Armed with Carolyne Larrington’s new book, as with a stout pair of secateurs, the reader will find that the thistles can be plucked with the flowers. Larrington does not attempt an exhaustive survey of emotion in Middle English literature, but offers orientation to the scholarly background, four chapters on different thematic and methodological strands, and a fifth chapter discussing what changes in the fifteenth century. Her book is concerned with what is distinctive aboutliterary emotions and specifically Middle English literary emotions. Nonetheless, the book will be of use to historians and to those addressing other languages or periods, thanks to its lucid account of the theoretical issues and its thought-provoking central claim.

 

The introduction narrows down by stages, looking first at evolutionary, psychological and philosophical accounts of emotion (James, Ekman, Oatley, Scherer, Nussbaum), then historical approaches (Rosenwein, Reddy, Boquet and Nagy, Althoff), then medieval theories (Avicenna, Augustine, Aquinas), and finally questions specific to literature. The survey is necessarily rapid but the account of humoral theory is a useful overview, as is the summary of medieval debates over the roles of the faculties of the soul such as will and appetite. As an early medievalist I note that the period between Augustine and c. 1100 remains a flyover zone, but the reception of classical medicine and philosophy in the twelfth century is certainly key to later medieval understandings. Larrington’s critique of the historians is worth attention: she points out that Rosenwein and Reddy show limited sensitivity to literary issues such as genre, rhetoric and personas, while Boquet and Nagy take more account of imaginative texts and “are inclined to regard literary and non-literary texts as situated on a continuum” (15). Larrington’s own proposal for how to approach the literary emphasises the rise of fictionality, citing Laura Ashe for the argument that “it is precisely…fictionality which allows audiences to reflect upon and develop their own interiority” (28). This can be connected to the emergent concept of the individual. While the idea of literature as a set of “culturally specific practices” (27) has a wider applicability, the emphasis on fictionality singles out what is new in Middle English and has the effect of centring the genre of romance. The centrality of romance throughout Larrington’s study distinguishes it from the work of Sarah McNamer and other scholars who focus on religious self-fashioning and practices of compassion.

 

Chapter One addresses “Words, Taxonomies and Translations.” It offers a brief account of the changing English vocabulary of emotion under the impact of French and, to a lesser extent, Old Norse, noting how Chaucer plays with dialectal differences in “The Reeve’s Tale” and how alliterative texts reveal “associative networks for key emotion terms” (53). In many romances, the emotions named may be basic and predictable, but narrative settings can imply more complex feelings. Similarly, complexity grows out of simplicity in the section on taxonomies: the Seven Deadly Sins in the personification allegory of Langland’s Piers Plowman acquire social contexts, body language and a range of behaviours. The section on translation emphasises how translators tackle not just equivalence between terms in different languages but the different emotion schemas available to different audiences; translation into Middle English of texts such as Chrétien’s Yvain or Marie de France’s Lai de Lanval means also a move out of the courtly world with its very particular ideology, which is reflected in its expectations for emotion.

 

Chapter Two, on “Embodiment and Action,” looks at different bodily signs and expressions of emotion, which lie on a continuum from unintended changes to deliberate gestures. Such bodily signs play a large role in Middle English representations of emotion (a respect in which they differ from Old English). Medieval theories of the physiological aspects of emotion, which Larrington follows Stephanie Trigg in labelling “affect” (98), explain that sensory input produces a response from vital spirits within the heart; this in turn gives rise to reactions such as blushing or fainting (99-100). Discussion is offered of changing colour, trembling, laughter and tears, plus kissing, kneeling and smiling as consciously intended expressions of feeling. Tears are particularly complicated; not only are they multivalent–one may cry with joy as much as with sorrow–but they are sometimes fake. Anti-feminist discourse accuses women of being able to cry at will. Bodily signs “are generally legible, even to modern audiences” (122) and the religious and secular texts do not have substantially different gestures, but the possibility of dissimulation complicates the conception of “‘natural’ movements of the humours and the spirits within the body” (p123). This provides a logical progression into the following chapter, which is on “Performativity and Performance.”

 

Chapter Three has the heaviest lifting to do of all the chapters in terms of explaining concepts. For Larrington, the difference, indeed the tension, between performativity and performance is important to various medieval texts; the chapter offers subtle analyses of scenes from Chaucer’s Troilus and Malory’s Morte Darthur. Nonetheless, there is often overlap in practice between emotional performances and performativity. Drawing on J. L. Austin’s account of performative utterances, performativity is explained as “getting things done with emotion,” making changes, especially in a social setting but also within the self. Reddy’s much-criticised concept of the “emotive” (a statement about emotion that enacts emotion or even brings it into being) finds rehabilitation here: Criseyde’s words about her own emotions are “exploratory and self-altering”; Lancelot and Guinevere’s words at their parting are “managerial” and “both lovers say what they must in order to discipline themselves” (140). Meanwhile, performance has to do with displaying emotion and is “calculated” (138). Performativity may seem to look inward to the real feeling that really happens and performance to the outward display that can be fake, but the performance itself can be performative. The chapter finishes with a case study on danger, the modest reluctance women show in response to approaches from a lover. Danger is both required and resented; a woman without reserve is too easy to get and loses honour, but men resent danger and always suspect it of being dissembled. There is very little space for a woman simply to refuse a man because she does not desire him, as the story of Ettarde illustrates in Malory. This chapter makes an especially strong case for the presence of complex depictions of emotional interiority in medieval texts; references to emotion do more than just “get things done” in the plot.

 

Chapter Four turns to “Audiences and affectivity.” Reconstructing the feelings of medieval audiences carries a risk of anachronistically projecting modern responses, but it can be attempted thanks to a combination of biological and cultural continuities and devices within texts. The reader of Middle English texts may be helped to use their mirror neurons by “mirror characters” within the text, who model expected emotional reactions. Emotions aroused by texts include emotions related to the artistic properties of the text (A-emotions, in Ed Tan’s terminology), while presenting the puzzle of affective response to events and people who are only represented, not real. A point that emerges strongly from the chapter is how deeply interested medieval writers were in the latter issue. Augustine reproached himself for being so easily stirred by the superficial emotions of tragedies; in the twelfth century, Aelred of Rievaulx and Peter of Blois were bothered by weeping over Arthurian literature when they ought to weep for Christ. Three hundred years later, the author of the Tretise of Miraclis Pleyinge thought that play audiences were moved by the staging of physical pain rather than by sorrow for sin. Nonetheless, as Larrington shows, medieval authors not only deployed a range of sonic, rhetorical and formal devices to elicit affect, including using romance tropes to arouse religious feeling, they also told stories within stories and represented characters responding to them. The Canterbury Tales is the most sophisticated but by no means the only example. Group pressures and emotional contagion are important to shaping audience emotion; in medieval plays, gestures are often accompanied by verbal commentary, to make sure people get the right message.

 

Chapter Five introduces a diachronic dimension. At the end of the fourteenth century, Chaucer is the great innovator in the representation of character. His direct imitators didn’t respond so much to this aspect of his art, but nonetheless individual character and greater complexity in the representation of emotion come increasingly to the fore in the fifteenth century. Larrington argues the key developments are the turn to long-form romance, especially prose romance, and the rise of life-writing. Many of the features that are newly found in fifteenth-century Middle English romances were already present in their much earlier French sources, but were generally curtailed in earlier translations. More extended dialogue, elaborated scenes of emotional display and increased narratorial comment are all encountered in texts such as the Prose Melusine, Malory’s Morte, Partonope of Blois and Blanchardyn and Eglantyne. In life-writing, the major examples discussed are the Male regle, Complaint and Dialogue of Hoccleve and the Book of Margery Kempe. Larrington repeatedly draws attention to something dynamic, tricky and shifting in these texts: Hoccleve achieves “a precarious integration of private and social self” (254) while Margery’s book offers “a highly unstable mixture of plausible fact and unverifiable interior experience” (256). Fifteenth-century developments provide the foundation for further change in the sixteenth century.

 

Finally, the conclusion summarizes the foregoing discussion and once more stresses the importance of romance, which enables the exploration of individual interiority in a way audiences can apply to themselves and to others. Devotional texts may offer routes to affectivity, but they are concerned not with distinctiveness but with salvation. Chaucer and theGawain-poet (another major source of examples throughout the book) are singled out as writers who “revolutionised the writing of interiority” (277).

 

It is difficult to do justice to the many observations and ideas offered in this book, and I am aware my precis is already rather long, while omitting many of the texts and ideas it addresses. As an Old English specialist, I find the thesis concerning fictionality, interiority and individuality especially intriguing. A favourite pastime of medievalists is arguing that the developments claimed as new and special by scholars of later periods are anticipated earlier. This is certainly true of affective piety; there are already texts in Old English and Anglo-Latin that promote a cultivation of emotion for devotional purposes, though penitence and fear are more prominent than compassion (see for example Jennifer Lorden’s 2023 study, Forms of Devotion in Early English Poetry). With respect to fictionality, one might say that, as Larrington acknowledges, the matter of romance is often framed as history. WhileBeowulf strikes a similar balance to the Arthurian texts between fantastic elements and historical claims, it also repeatedly mentions the subjective feelings of its characters, such as Grendel’s expectation of a feast or Beowulf’s moment of inner weariness as he fights Grendel’s mother. But romance expands the repertoire of emotions salient for narrative, foregrounds personal goals and relationships and enables a more granular exploration. The tension of performance and performativity and the connection Larrington draws between the possibility of dissembling and the possession of a private interiority are especially worth further thought. Larrington is responding in part to Graham Williams’ brilliant book, Sincerity in Medieval English Language and Literature (2018), in which he argues that the concept of sincerity has its origins in Christian teaching on scrutinising the heart and forming a right inner disposition. However, there has to be a movement from the religious to the secular realm for the actual state of the heart to be as interesting as the formation of a righteous heart.

 

This book is warmly recommended to anyone interested in the periodization of English literature, audience response and subjectivity and the emergence of the individual, as well as the study of emotions in literature.

Saga emotions

Source : Manchester Univesity Press

Gareth Lloyd Evans, Brynja Þorgeirsdóttir and Carolyne Larrington (éd.), Saga emotions, Manchester University Press, 2025

Focusing particularly on historically oriented sagas, Saga emotions identifies and examines a range of emotions from across Old Norse-Icelandic saga literature. Each chapter begins with a discrete emotion term, such as reiði (anger), gleði (joy), or the peculiarly Old Norse víghugr (killing-mood), exploring its usages within the broad saga corpus, and focusing on its contextual meanings and narrative purposes. The contributions explore the specifics of the lexical terms used for different emotion states and offer in-depth case studies that consider how various emotions manifest within particular examples of saga literature. The book offers the emotional granularity lacking in current studies of Norse emotion and serves as an essential foundation for future research and study into emotional depiction in Old Norse-Icelandic saga literature.

Introduction
1 angr, hryggr (sadness) – Edel Maria Porter
2 ást (Christian love) – Siân Grønlie
3 ást, elska, unna (Secular love) – Sif Rikhardsdottir
4 aumka, líkn, sampíning (compassion) – Ásdís Egilsdóttir
5 berserksgangr and víghugr (going berserk and the killing mood) – Gareth Lloyd Evans
6 girnd (desire) – Alexander Wilson
7 gleði (happiness, joy) – Carolyne Larrington
8 harmr, ho¨rmung, sorg, tregi (grief) – Kristen Mills
9 leiðask, leiðendi, viðbjóðr (disgust) – Rebecca Merkelbach
10 ofsi (pride) – Kate Olley
11 ótti (fear) – Teodoro Manrique Antón
12 reiði (anger) – George Manning
13 skomm, skammask (shame) – Brynja Þorgeirsdóttir
Index

 

 

Communicating the Passion

Source : Brepols

Pietro Delcorno, Holly Johnson (éd.), Communicating the Passion. The Socio-Religious Function of an Emotional Narrative (1250-1530), Brepols, 2025

This volume investigates the vivid and emotionally intense commemoration of the Passion of Christ as a key element in late medieval religious culture. Its goal is to shed light on how the Passion was communicated and on its socio-religious function in late medieval Europe. By adopting a multidisciplinary approach, the volume analyses the different media involved in this cultural process (sermons, devotional texts, lively performances, statues, images), the multiple forms and languages in which the Passion was presented to the faithful, and how they were expected to respond to it. Key questions concern the strategies used to present the Passion; the interaction between texts, images, and sounds in different media; the dissemination of theological ideas in the public space; the fashioning of an affective response in the audience; and the presence or absence of anti-Jewish commonplaces.

By exploring the interplay among a wide range of sources, this volume highlights the pervasive role of the Passion in late medieval society and in the life of the people of the time.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Communicating the Passion of Christ: An Introduction
PIETRO DELCORNO

Negotiating Gender Roles in Fourteen-Century Bohemian Literature and Performance: Marian and Magdalenian Laments
ELIŠKA KUBARTOVÁ

Picturing the Passion: Devotional Strategies in the Passional of Abbess Kunigunde
KATRIN JANZ-WENIG AND LENKA PANUŠKOVÁ

The Passion Narrative in the Meditationes Vitae Christi: Texts and Images
DÁVID FALVAY

Meditational and Narrative Techniques in a Passion Text of a Hungarian-Language Dominican Manuscript
ÁGNES KORONDI

Hearing the Passion: Soundscapes of Richard Rolle’s Vernacular Passion Meditations
TAMÁS KARÁTH

The Art of Seeing: Passion Imagescapes in the Sermons of Robert Rypon
HOLLY JOHNSON

Preaching the Passion in Fourteenth-Century Bohemia: Milíč of Kroměříž’s Good Friday Sermons
OLGA KALASHNIKOVA

Communicating the Passion and Sainthood: Patterns in Preaching on Saint Stanislaus of Krakow
STANISLAVA KUZMOVÁ

Emotions, Theology, and Society in a Blockbuster: The Good Friday Sermon by Gritsch/Grütsch
PIETRO DELCORNO

Roberto Caracciolo’s Good Friday Preaching: Performance, Religious Drama, and Poetry
GIACOMO MARIANI

Words from the Cross: The Speaking Crucifixes and the Passion of the Franciscan Friars
CARLA BINO

Examining Finnish Anti-Judaic Imagery through Sermons: The Passion Iconography of the Holy Cross Church of Hattula
JUSSI HANSKA

 

Index

Managing Emotions in the Middle Ages

Source : Brill

Flocel Sabaté (ed.), Managing Emotions in the Middle Ages, Brill, 2025

The life experiences of men and women take on meaning through the emotionality they entail, and the intensity of these experiences build certain memories which link the individuals within a society. As such, this volume argues that examining the management of emotions in late medieval society will allow us to better understand it. By discussing theoretical frameworks for the historical study of emotions and presenting a range of case studies from the Middle Ages, the authors of this book illustrate how the management of emotions reflects and sheds light on the code of values and behaviour that guided this society.

Contributors are: Maravillas Aguiar, Iñaki Bazán, Anna Caiozzo, Carla Casagrande, Riccardo Cristiani, Vincent Debiais, Jonas Holst, Eduard Juncosa, Andrea Knox, Mauricio Molina, Miguel Ángel Motis, Josep Maria Ruiz Simon, Flocel Sabaté, Karen Stöber, William Marx, Barbara H. Rosenwein, Alberto Velasco, and Alexandra Velissariou.

The Emotional Expression of Authority and Power in the Middle Ages

Source : Brill

Flocel Sabaté, The Emotional Expression of Authority and Power in the Middle Ages, Brill, 2025

The relationship between rulers and their subjects is always channelled by emotion. This volume explores the specific tones this relationship took on in the Middle Ages, as well as their accordance with a concept of power based ultimately on agreement, an inclination to visualise emotions, a social pedagogy based on fear, and a religious ideology which placed humanity between divine order and divine wrath. It also examines the emotive models used to rule society and deal with conflicts. Together, the contributions in this book demonstrate how our understanding of late medieval society can be enhanced by recognising the emotional strategies present in the game of power and how they were used to build authority.

Contributors are: Alexandru Stefan Anca, Attila Bárány, Ulrike Becker, Luciano Gallinari, Sari Katajala-Peltomaa, Vinni Lucherini, Esther Martí Sentañés, Francesc Massip, Rob Meens, Tamás Olbei, Bernard Ribémont, Flocel Sabaté, and Hans-Joachim Schmidt.

Defining and Perceiving Feelings in the Late Middle Ages

Source : Brill

Flocel Sabaté (ed.), Defining and Perceiving Feelings in the Late Middle Ages, Brill, 2025

In order to have a constructive discussion about feelings in the late Middle Ages, it is beneficial to first evaluate how the feelings of individual men and women were defined. As such, the purpose of this book is to explore the words used by late medieval men and women to refer to their feelings and to examine their meanings. By doing so, we can better understand the efforts of late medieval society to express, use, and transmit certain feelings, especially as they related to manoeuvres of power or the articulation of social values.

Contributors are: Mechthild Albert, Jacqueline Cerquiglioni-Toulet, Frank Collard, Paola Corti Badia, Francesca Español, Isabel Grifoll, Juan Francisco Jiménez Alcázar, José Martínez Gázquez, Alicia Minguélez, Matilde Juan, Liza N. Pina-Rubio, Gerardo Rodríguez, Flocel Sabaté, Benedicte Sère, and Marta Serrano.

“Bellica. Guerre, histoire et sociétés”, 1/2024 : “La honte”

Source : Bellica

À la croisée d’une histoire des sensibilités et d’une his­toire sociale et politique des sociétés en guerre, ce nu­méro de la revue Bellica a pour ambition d’appréhender dans le temps long toute la complexité de la honte et de ses usages sociaux et politiques. Qualifiée, à la suite d’Aristote de passion, d’émotion ou encore de senti­ment, la honte articule, à di­verses échelles, l’individuel et le collectif, l’intime et le social. Le numéro souligne l’omniprésence des références à la honte, depuis le récit de la guerre de Troie proposé par l’Iliade jusqu’aux écrits des officiers de la Marine française de la Grande Guerre. La honte jette l’opprobre sur ceux dont le com­portement écorne l’honneur guerrier ou sur ceux pour qui la défaite signifie le déclassement, tels les capitaines mal­heureux de la défaite de la Savoie contre Gênes en 1672. Les articles réunis démontrent toute la plasticité de la honte du guerrier qui recouvre une myriade de comportements sans pour autant présenter aucun ca­ractère d’automaticité. Mise au service du politique, cette plasticité non seulement rejaillit dans la cité et poursuit les anciens combattants, et par­fois leurs fa­milles, mais constitue aussi un outil de mo­bilisation pour la guerre. Ce numéro analyse enfin les usages de la honte comme instrument de contrôle so­cial : l’humi­liation de l’en­nemi participe de son abaissement, comme en témoignent les pillages et vio­lences sexuées commis pendant la guerre de Cent Ans, tandis qu’au sein des groupes combattants, dans un jeu de balancier entre récompenses et punitions, l’infamie et la stigma­tisation contribuent au maintien de la discipline et des hiérarchies.

Éditorial

pages 5-6

par Simon Cahanier, Benjamin Deruelle, Émilie Dosquet, Guillaume Pinet et Quentin Verreycken
Télécharger l’article

Honte et humiliations en guerre

pages 7-18

par Julie Le Gac et Silvia Mostaccio
Télécharger l’article








Fin de l’année 2022 à août 2024

pages 129-133

par François Cadiou, Valérie Toureille, Paul Vo-ha et Mathias Thura
Télécharger l’article

Tomber en amour. Enquêtes sur la naissance du sentiment au XVIIIe siècle

Source : Classiques Garnier

Elodie Ripoll et Catherine Gallouët (dir.), Tomber en amour. Enquêtes sur la naissance du sentiment au XVIIIe siècle, Paris, Classiques Garnier, 2025.

L’amour est un des sujets majeurs des belles-lettres au xviiie siècle. L’instant de sa naissance, aussi fugace que merveilleux, n’a cessé de fasciner auteurs et autrices. Dix-huit essais enquêtent sur ce topos et ses représentations à l’aune de travaux sur l’histoire des émotions, du corps et du genre.

 

De la risa al miedo: las emociones en la Edad Media

source : Sociedad Española de Estudios Medievales

Presentamos esta nueva colección de la Sociedad Española de Estudios Medievales, coordinada por el profesor José Antonio Jara Fuente, con la denominación «Cuadernos de la SEEM. Divulgación«. Nuestro objetivo es el de acercar con trabajos diferentes temas que puedan resultar interesantes para un público amante del Medievo, pero que no se dedica profesionalmente a su estudio o investigación. Serán de una extensión moderada, a veces más o menos breve, y que podrán aparecer bien de forma individual como textos monográficos, o bien de manera grupal, como es el caso que supone el primer número de la colección. En un futuro se completará con su paralela, «Cuadernos de la SEEM. Investigación», y de la que esperamos vea la luz en un corto espacio de tiempo.
Concebida la colección para estar en abierto para quien desee consultarla en nuestra sección Publicaciones de esta misma web, es otra de las iniciativas llevadas a cabo por la SEEM para cumplir con uno de los objetivos especificados en nuestros estatutos: 

Alicia Inés MONTERO MÁLAGA (coord.)
De la risa al miedo: las emociones en la Edad Media
Colección «Cuadernos de la SEEM. Divulgación». 1
Murcia, Sociedad Española de Estudios Medievales, 2024,  72 págs.
ISBN: 978-84-09-66474-0

ÍNDICE

Presentación
Alicia I. Montero Málaga

Los múltiples rostros de la risa en la cultura medieval
Raúl González González

Conflicto y emoción en la Edad Media
Nuria Corral Sánchez

El miedo de los poderosos
Alicia I. Montero Málaga

Descargar

Andrea Ghidoni, Piangere la memoria. Lamento funebre e culture medievali

Piangere la memoria

Lamento funebre e culture medievali

Andrea Ghidoni

 
Piangere la memoria
 
 

Piangere la memoria

Lamento funebre e culture medievali

Andrea Ghidoni

 

In breve

Il lamento funebre è una istituzione culturale diffusa in quasi tutte le società umane, attraverso la quale si piange la morte di una persona considerata fondamentale per un individuo, una famiglia o una comunità. Esso si declina nelle culture come rito tradizionale ma anche come forma letteraria. Il Medioevo europeo ci ha lasciato un’ampia produzione di lamenti funebri nella poesia lirica, narrativa e religiosa. Sono testi scritti nelle […]

indice  
Andrea Ghidoni

Dottore di ricerca in Filologia romanza, ha insegnato questa disciplina all’Università di Macerata. Ha svolto attività di ricerca in Belgio (Namur) e Germania (Münster) e collabora con la cattedra di Filologia romanza dell’Università degli Studi di Genova. Filo conduttore di molti suoi lavori scientifici è la concezione dell’eroe nelle letterature medievali.

 

Carocci Faber

 

Introduction à l’histoire des sensibilités

Source : La Découverte

Christophe Granger et Sarah Rey, Introduction à l’histoire des sensibilités, Paris, La Découverte, 2024.

L’histoire des sensibilités est aujourd’hui un champ de recherche florissant. Reliée à l’affirmation du sensible dans nos sociétés, elle étudie les sens, les émotions et les sentiments dans leur formation et leur transformation. Elle ne se borne pas à prouver qu’il y a une histoire de l’amour, de la haine, du goût ou de l’odorat à travers les âges : elle montre que les façons de sentir et d’éprouver, loin de procéder de fonctions naturelles ou de facultés individuelles, sont mêlées à l’histoire des sociétés humaines, qu’elles s’accordent aux enjeux sociaux, moraux et politiques qui les traversent.
Face à la pluralité des démarches de savoir qu’adoptent historiennes et historiens à ce sujet, ce livre vise à clarifier aussi concrètement que possible comment se fait l’histoire des sensibilités et ce qu’on peut attendre d’elle. Outre qu’il questionne les méthodes à l’oeuvre, l’usage des sources, les manières d’écrire ou de prouver, il prend le parti de puiser ses exemples dans toutes les périodes canoniques de l’histoire, de l’Antiquité à nos jours.

Introduction
Une démarche de connaissance
Apports et enjeux
I. Genèse d’une ” histoire sans nom “
Origines impossibles : histoire et tragédie

Dilemmes antiques
Histoire tragique et historiographie médiévale
Passions et histoire à l’âge classique
Naissance d’un objet d’histoire (XVIIIe-XIXe siècles)
L'” âme sensible ” : un tournant social
La nature humaine et la forme concrète des sociétés
Scott, Michelet et l’histoire sensible des peuples
Le ” vertige des foisonnements ” (XXe-XXIe siècles)
Un moment allemand : Nietzsche, Simmel, Boas, Weber
Un moment français : les durkheimiens, la psychologie collective et les premières Annales
Encadré 1. L’exubérant Moyen Âge de Johan Huizinga
Mot de passe : ” Mentalités ”
Et maintenant ?
II. L’usage des sens
L’oeil et le monde visible

Historicité du regard
Voir, vu, visible
Quand voir, c’est faire
Son et paysage sonore
Reconstituer la présence et l’intensité des sons
Encadré 2. Le son des grottes paléolithiques : une préhistoire des sens ?
Savoirs, techniques et modification de l’expérience sonore
Toucher, goûter, sentir
L’onguent et l’ordure : vers l’effacement des odeurs ?
Du goût au dégoût
Le toucher, le plus discret de tous les sens ?
Les sens et la mise en ordre du monde
Polysensorialité
Percevoir, classer, gouverner
Encadré 3. ” Le savant et le cannibale ” : une histoire sensible des sciences
III. Les formes de la vie affective
Sentiments distingués

Du berceau à la tombe : les sentiments familiaux
Encadré 4. L’expression obligatoire des sentiments conjugaux : lettres de la Grande Guerre
Sentiments moraux et ordre social
Encadré 5. La vergogne, une émotion médiévale
De la sexuation des sentiments
Une pragmatique des émotions
Du rire aux larmes : l’expression des émotions
Émotions et configurations sociales : la peur, la haine, la douleur
Une civilisation des moeurs ?
L’approche civilisationnelle : pulsion et contention
” Communautés émotionnelles ”
IV. Émotions politiques
Gouverner par les émotions

Sacres, terreurs et bains de foule
Encadré 6. Les émotions de l’empereur : le cas de Rome
Émotions d’institution
Dire et ordonner : le savant et le religieux
Révolte, scandale, indignation
Mobilisations politiques et émotions populaires
Scandales et indignation, ou la rationalité des émotions
Encadré 7. Sensibiliser : les mains coupées du Congo
Un ” partage du sensible ” ?
V. Une histoire au présent
Comment savoir ?

Quelles sources ?
Le savoir et la preuve : une pratique de l’assemblage
Micro-histoire et archives ” à contre-courant ”
Le choix des mots
Encadré 8. Les formes théâtrales de l’histoire
Une histoire engagée ?
Conclusion
Repères bibliographiques.

Un Medioevo di abbracci

Source : Il Mulino

https://rmblf.be/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/fcc4caacover38880.png

Virtus Zallot, Un Medioevo di abbracci. Non solo d’amore, non solo umani, Bologne, Il Mulino, 2024

Abbracci di madri, amanti, bambini, amici, peccatori e santi; a persone, animali, cose, figure dipinte o evocate in sogno; intimi e sociali, umani e divini, metaforici e reali. Gesti che accolgono, congedano, proteggono, consolano, aggrediscono, sostengono il corpo e l’anima. Questo volume li indaga nell’arte e nella letteratura del Medioevo, dove sono eloquenti ed eclatanti poiché in tale epoca, e ancor più nel suo immaginario, il linguaggio corporeo integrava fortemente, e spesso sostituiva, le parole. Pur messi in scena entro contesti apparentemente lontani, gli abbracci medievali sono una sorta di specchio entro cui osservarci, scoprendo che ci appartengono e parlano di noi.

Virtus Zallot è docente di Storia dell’arte medievale all’Accademia di Belle Arti SantaGiulia di Brescia.Studiosa di iconografia sacra, collabora con istituzioni culturali ed enti pubblici a progetti di ricerca e di valorizzazione del patrimonio artistico. Per il Mulino ha pubblicato «Con i piedi nel Medioevo. Gesti e calzature nell’arte e nell’immaginario» (2018) e «Sulle teste nel Medioevo. Storie e immagini di capelli» (2021). Scrive per «Il Giornale dell’Arte».

La Fabrique des émotions disjointes

Source : Editions de Minuit

Georges Didi-Huberman, La Fabrique des émotions disjointes. Faits d’affects, 2, Editions de Minuit, 2024

Les faits d’affects sont à valences multiples. Ils méritent donc d’être interrogés dans le pourquoi de leurs motifs souvent inconscients, dans le comment de leurs manifestations gestuelles et, tout aussi bien, dans le pour quoi de leurs destins éthiques et politiques. Car tout cela fonctionne ensemble dans chaque moment de l’histoire.

Ce volume, comme le précédent, s’autorise à vagabonder entre des analyses de cas singuliers très divers, mais pour voir s’y dessiner une configuration particulière bien que, malheureusement, très puissante et répandue. Les faits d’affects y sont réglés selon une disjonction : « fronts contre fronts », en quelque sorte. On entre là dans le vaste domaine d’une anthropologie politique des sensibilités et, notamment, de ce que Svetlana Alexievitch nommait les « documents-sentiments » relatifs à l’expérience des femmes russes enrôlées dans les combats de la Seconde Guerre mondiale. Comment, alors, ne pas s’interroger, en amont sur la « fabrique des émotions » dans le cadre propagandiste nazi, en aval sur la notion économique de « promotion » capitaliste ? Comment, au fil de ce parcours, ne pas revenir à la notion – toujours à revisiter, de Hegel à Marx et de Freud à l’anthropologie contemporaine – du fétichisme, là où justement les relations des sujets aux objets prennent un tour réifié, aliéné, mortifère ?

La disjonction affective ne caractériserait-elle pas, pour finir, ce « malaise dans la culture » duquel nous peinons à nous extraire dans un monde où notre liberté dans le « partage du sensible » se heurte constamment à une sorte de loi du marché affectif ?