CONGRESS CANCELED Emotions in Medieval Literature
Description
Emotions—affects, passions, feelings, and sentiments—have become one of the most significant topics in medieval studies. As medieval thinkers noted, emotions played a critical role in the cognitive and ethical functions of human mind on an individual level; on the communal level, emotions—shaped by social norms and rules—were used as instruments in the formation and dissolution of medieval communities and social movements. In recent years, historians of emotions have not only studied emotions as historical norms and rules under the heading of “emotionology”, but also expanded their research to include performative, constructivist, and practice theory approaches, which generate methodological concepts such as emotives, emotional habitus, emotional community/regime etc.
Given the vital importance of emotions to medieval culture, an examination of emotions in medieval literary works would shed new light on the interrelations between emotions, literature, and medieval communities. As Mary Carruthers has stated, great literary works, “do not just simulate or represent human feelings, but [also] produce them in those who are experiencing the work”; they serve as “agents in our emotions and thoughts as well as our sensations.” Literary works, as “affective scripts”, are capable of generating complex emotional effects in those who engage with them. As texts were memorized in the middle ages, medieval literary texts can be considered as emotional communities in which the readers lived together and shared a common vocabulary, values, and memories.
A study on emotions is to bound be interdisciplinary. This session invites papers that draw upon a variety of fields to study emotions in the medieval literature, among which the history of emotions and the study on affective piety are prominent ones. Participants should not only aim to historicize emotions, i.e. the social-historical contexts of emotions, but also to draw upon the medieval literary theory and practice. Papers are encouraged to focus on key emotions (such as grief, fear, and anger) in the highly influential literary canons of the high and late middle ages (circa. 1000-1500). Xiaoyi Zhang
CONGRESS CANCELED Emotions in Medieval Literature
Schneider 1355
Emotions—affects, passions, feelings, and sentiments—have become one of the most significant topics in medieval studies. As medieval thinkers noted, emotions played a critical role in the cognitive and ethical functions of human mind on an individual level; on the communal level, emotions—shaped by social norms and rules—were used as instruments in the formation and dissolution of medieval communities and social movements. In recent years, historians of emotions have not only studied emotions as historical norms and rules under the heading of “emotionology”, but also expanded their research to include performative, constructivist, and practice theory approaches, which generate methodological concepts such as emotives, emotional habitus, emotional community/regime etc.
Given the vital importance of emotions to medieval culture, an examination of emotions in medieval literary works would shed new light on the interrelations between emotions, literature, and medieval communities. As Mary Carruthers has stated, great literary works, “do not just simulate or represent human feelings, but [also] produce them in those who are experiencing the work”; they serve as “agents in our emotions and thoughts as well as our sensations.” Literary works, as “affective scripts”, are capable of generating complex emotional effects in those who engage with them. As texts were memorized in the middle ages, medieval literary texts can be considered as emotional communities in which the readers lived together and shared a common vocabulary, values, and memories.
A study on emotions is to bound be interdisciplinary. This session invites papers that draw upon a variety of fields to study emotions in the medieval literature, among which the history of emotions and the study on affective piety are prominent ones. Participants should not only aim to historicize emotions, i.e. the social-historical contexts of emotions, but also to draw upon the medieval literary theory and practice. Papers are encouraged to focus on key emotions (such as grief, fear, and anger) in the highly influential literary canons of the high and late middle ages (circa. 1000-1500). Xiaoyi Zhang