The Feeling Heart In Medieval And Early Modern Europe

The heart is an iconic symbol in the medieval and early modern European world. In addition to being a physical organ, it is a key conceptual device related to emotions, cognition, the self and identity, and the body. The heart is read as a metaphor for human desire and will, and situated in opposition to or alongside reason and cognition. In medieval and early modern Europe, the “feeling heart” – the heart as the site of emotion and emotional practices – informed a broad range of art, literature, music, heraldry, medical texts, and devotional and ritual practices. This multidisciplinary collection brings together art historians, literary scholars, historians, theologians, and musicologists to highlight the range of meanings attached to the symbol of the heart, the relationship between physical and metaphorical representations of the heart, and the uses of the heart in the production of identities and communities in medieval and early modern Europe.

The heart is an iconic symbol in the medieval and early modern European world. In addition to being a physical organ, it is a key conceptual device related to emotions, cognition, the self and identity, and the body. The heart is read as a metaphor for human desire and will, and situated in opposition to or alongside reason and cognition. In medieval and early modern Europe, the “feeling heart” – the heart as the site of emotion and emotional practices – informed a broad range of art, literature, music, heraldry, medical texts, and devotional and ritual practices. This multidisciplinary collection brings together art historians, literary scholars, historians, theologians, and musicologists to highlight the range of meanings attached to the symbol of the heart, the relationship between physical and metaphorical representations of the heart, and the uses of the heart in the production of identities and communities in medieval and early modern Europe.

This book analyzes how acts of feeling at a discursive, somatic, and rhetorical level were theorized and practiced in multiple medieval and early-modern sources (literary, medical, theological, and archival). It covers a large chronological and geographical span from eleventh-century France, to fifteenth-century Iberia and England, and ending with seventeenth-century Jesuit meditative literature. Essays in this book explore how particular emotional norms belonging to different socio-cultural communities (courtly, academic, urban elites) were subverted or re-shaped; engage with the study of emotions as sudden, but impactful, bursts of sensory experience and feelings; and analyze how emotions are filtered and negotiated through the prism of literary texts and the socio-political status of their authors.

This companion volume seeks to trace the development of ideas relating to death, burial, and the remembrance of the dead in Europe from ca.1300-1700.

Whoever is curious about emotions and their expression in the Old Regime has to discover Johan Huizinga's works. From his point of view, even if it is a real challenge to comprehend the world of the mind and of the sentimental life, historians of medieval and early modern societies cannot help themselves from examining character studies to reconcile daily life and historicity. Anglo-Saxon studies have proved since the beginning of the seventies that we can give historical meaning to fierce emotions like anger and fear, to mental suffering characterized by tears and pain, or even to the sudden feeling of aesthetic pleasure, mystical ecstasy and delight all those emotions which put the breath of life into anonymous people crowded into our historical studies. Outside the debates of psycho-history, our study views the topic of emotions from the angle of social construction and civilization's process. The town reveals itself as an ideal context within which to articulate values, mentalities, customs and aesthetics. From the marketplace to the court of justice, from the procession route to the scaffold, from the theatre stage to the scene of riots, the town concentrates in its heart a public space where both delicate and strong emotions are repeatedly enacted. The purpose of this book is to develop different approaches -according to sphere, events, social categories, social relations, gender, etc.- and thus to suggest a more precise analysis of emotion as a means of communication inside the town. Three urban social " spheres " where divergent emotions were publicly expressed, manipulated, discussed and represented are put into focus : that of the urban revolt, that of the urban administration of justice and that of the staging of urban theatre and poetry. This book includes contributions from Peter Arnade, Marc Boone, Stijn Bussels, Vincent Challet, Dirk Coigneau, Elisabeth Crouzet-Pavan, Jeroen Deploige, Jan Dumolyn, Jelle Haemers, Eve-Marie Halba, Elodie Lecuppre-Desjardin, Lauro Martines, Mariann Naessens, Walter Prevenier, Bart Ramakers, Laurent Smagghe, Anne-Laure Van Bruaene, Jacqueline Van Leeuwen and Valerie Wilhite.

A trans-cultural collection of studies on early modern imagery of the phenomena of pain and suffering and viewers’ potential responses. Authors variously consider pain and suffering as somatic, emotional, and psychological experiences.

Described as ‘the most beautiful book ever printed’ previous research has focused on the printing history of the Hypnerotomachia and its copious literary sources. This monograph critically engages with the narrative of the Hypnerotomachia and with Poliphilo as a character within this narrative, placing it within its European literary context. Using narratological analysis, it examines the journey of Poliphilo and the series of symbolic, allegorical, and metaphorical experiences narrated by him that are indicative of his metamorphosing interiority. It analyses the relationship between Poliphilo and his external surroundings in sequences of the narrative pertaining to thresholds; the symbolic architectural, topographical, and garden forms and spaces; and Poliphilo’s transforming interior passions including his love of antiquarianism, language, and Polia, the latter of which leads to his elegiac description of lovesickness, besides examinations of numerosophical symbolism in number, form, and proportion of the architectural descriptions and how they relate to the narrative.

States of emotion were vital as a foundation to society in the premodern period, employed as a force of order to structure diplomatic transactions, shape dynastic and familial relationships, and align religious beliefs, practices and communities. At the same time, societies understood that affective states had the potential to destroy order, creating undesirable disorder and instability that had both individual and communal consequences. These had to be actively managed, through social mechanisms such as children's education, acculturation, and training, and also through religious, intellectual, and textual practices that were both socio-cultural and individual. Presenting the latest research from an international team of scholars, this volume argues that the ways in which emotions created states of order and disorder in medieval and early modern Europe were deeply informed by contemporary gender ideologies. Together, the essays reveal the critical roles that gender ideologies and lived, structured, and desired emotional states played in producing both stability and instability.