READING THE EARLY MODERN PASSIONS

Reading the Early Modern PassionsEssays in the Cultural History of EmotionEdited by Gail Kern Paster, Katherine Rowe, and Mary Floyd-WilsonThanks to the collection as a whole, the complex history of the passions in the early modern mind and body will now take a more prominent place in our study of the literature, art, and music of the period.--MLRProvides an engaging and extremely useful introduction to historicized explorations of the early modern passions through the lens of the creative arts.--Sixteenth Century JournalHow translatable is the language of the emotions across cultures and time? What connotations of particular emotions, strongly felt in the early modern period, have faded or shifted completely in our own? If Western culture has traditionally held emotion to be hostile to reason and the production of scientific knowledge, why and how have the passions been lauded as windows to higher truths? Assessing the changing discourses of feeling and their relevance to the cultural history of affect, Reading the Early Modern Passions offers fourteen interdisciplinary essays on the meanings and representations of the emotional universe of Renaissance Europe in literature, music, and art.Many in the early modern era were preoccupied by the relation of passion to action and believed the passions to be a natural force requiring stringent mental and physical disciplines. In speaking to the question of the historicity and variability of emotions within individuals, several of these essays investigate specific emotions, such as sadness, courage, and fear. Other essays turn to emotions spread throughout society by contemporary events, such as a rulers death, the outbreak of war, or religious schism, and discuss how such emotions have widespread consequences in both social practice and theory.Addressing anxieties about the power of emotions; their relation to the public good; their centrality in promoting or disturbing an individuals relation to God, to monarch, and to f