The course investigates key developments in emotional concepts from late antiquity to the dawn of the early modern period. It delves into the late-antique reconfiguration of the emotional self, highlighting debates on passions, virtues, and the individual’s inner workings, into the Medieval impact of feudalism, scholasticism, monasticism, and chivalric codes in shaping emotional norms and responses, especially to devotion, love, duty, honor, compassion, fear, and sorrow, as well as into the Humanistic-Renaissance changes to the understanding of the self, with a new emphasis on the individual and a growing interest in the consideration of emotional states, also based on the rediscovery of classical models. Throughout the course, students will engage critically with a variety of textual sources – when possible, compared/contrasted to related iconographical examples - including memories, treatises, chronicles, and letters such as those by Augustine of Hippo, Gregory the Great, William of Tyre, Abelard and Heloise, Marguerite Porete, Francis Petrarch, Christine de Pizan, Alessandra Strozzi.

By discussing the evolution of emotional concepts and models, students will gain a deeper understanding of the intersection between historical and cultural trajectories in the formation of individual and social identities. Students will also be able to understand and evaluate the role of emotions and sensibilities in generating responses to specific religious and political patterns and assess the role of the “irrational” and emotions in triggering specific historical events, such as the Crusader movement, political and religious violence against minorities, and witch hunts.

Upon completing the course, students should be able to:

· Analyze the historical evolution of emotional concepts: Students will be able to identify and analyze how concepts of emotions and sensibilities evolved from late antiquity through the medieval and Renaissance periods, examining how cultural, religious, and cultural changes influenced emotional experiences.

·  Evaluate the role of emotions in social and political contexts: Students will develop an understanding of how emotions were not only personal but also shaped social and political dynamics in these periods, including the impact of emotions on governance, religious practices, and social hierarchies.

·  Critically assess sources on emotions: Students will gain the skills to critically engage with primary sources (such as religious texts, literature, and art) to explore how emotions were represented, discussed, and performed across different periods of history.

·  Explore the intersection of gender, emotions, and identity: Students will examine the relationship between emotions and gender, focusing on how emotional experiences were often gendered and how they influenced personal and collective identities during these times.

· Connect historical emotional frameworks to contemporary understandings: Students will be able to draw connections between historical perceptions of emotions and modern psychological or sociological concepts, exploring how past frameworks still influence contemporary discussions about emotional expression and sensibility.

COURSE SCHEDULE 

A.      Setting Up The Theoretical Framework

Week 1

·         Why Caring about Emotions? The Historian and Emotions

ü  Rob Boddice, A History of Feelings (Islington: Reaktion Books, 2019), pp. 1-13 (“Introduction: Feeling for History”)

ü  Lucien Febvre, Sensibility and History: How to Reconstitute the Emotional Life of the Past, in A New Kind of History: From the Writings of Febvre, ed. by Peter Burke (New York: Harper & Row, 1973), pp. 12–26.

·         What Are Emotions?

ü  Guest Lecture by a colleague from the JCU Department of Psychological and Social Sciences

Week 2

·         Emotions and Cultural History

ü  Patrick H. Hutton, “The History of Mentalities: The New Map of Cultural History”, History and Theory, Vol. 20, No. 3 (Oct., 1981): 237-259

ü  Fernand Braudel, History and the Social Sciences: The Longue Durée, Transl. by Immanuel Wallerstein, Review (2009), 32 (2): 171–203

·         Researching Emotions in Historical Perspective

ü  Centre for the History of the Emotions

ü  Emotions + Disease

ü  The History of Emotions Blog | Conversations about the history of feeling from www.qmul.ac.uk/emotions

ü  https://www.history-of-emotions.mpg.de/en

ü  emotionsandsenses.wordpress.com

B.      Emotions in their Historical Contexts

ü  Love

Week 3

·         Love and Sex in the Mirror of the Middle Ages

ü  Carolyne Larrington (ed.), Women and Writing in Medieval Europe: A Sourcebook, pp. 39-44; 50-51; 54-55; 60-65; 208-209

ü  Thomas Dixon, The History of Emotions: A Very Short Introduction, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2023), Ch. 6: “Looking for Love”

·         Love and the Body in the Renaissance

ü  Aeneas Sylvius Piccolomini, The Tale of the Two Lovers, transl. by Flora Grierson, (London: Constable and Co., 1929) selected pages

ü  Fear

Week 4

·         The Terror of History

ü  Teofilo F. Ruiz, The Terror of History: On the Uncertainties of Life in Western Civilization (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2011), pp. 1-34

·         The Great Fear of the Year 1000 C.E.

ü  Daniel Verhelst, Adso of Montier-en-Der and the Fear of the Year 1000, in The Apocalyptic Year 1000: Religious Expectation and Social Change, 950 – 1050, ed. by Richard A. Landes, Andrew Colin Gow, David C. van Meter (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), pp. 81-92

Week 5

·         “An Age of Tears, Anguish, and Torment”: The Monstrous in the Age of Humanism

ü  Sin and Fear: Review

ü  Religious Sensibilities

·         Popular Religiosity in the Early Medieval Times

ü  Aron Gurevich, Medieval Popular Culture: Problems of Belief and Perception, transl. by János M. Bak and Paula A. Hollingsworth (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), pp. 78-103 (“Popular culture in the mirror of the penitentials”)

Week 6

·         Religion and Folkloric Beliefs in the 13th century

ü  Jean-Claude Schmitt, The Holy Greyhound: Guinefort, Healer of Children Since the Thirteenth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), pp. 39-82

·         Ordinary People and Religious Structures in the Age of the Counter-Reformation

ü  John Bossy, “The Counter-Reformation and the people of Catholic Europe”, Past and Present 47 (1970): 51-70

ü  Life and Death

Week 7

·         Tamed Death

ü  Philippe Ariès, Western Attitudes Toward Death from the Middle Ages to the Present (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1974), pp. 1-25 (“Tamed Death”)

·         The Black Death in the 14^th Century

ü  Ole J. Benedictow, The Complete History of the Black Death (Martlesham: Boydell & Brewer, 2021), pp. 3-23

ü  Alfonso XI of Castile (1311-1350) and the Black Death, Three Sources: https://sourcebooks.web.fordham.edu/source/1349-AlfonsoXIandplague.asp

ü  Man, Nature, and Space

Week 8

·         Time, Space, Nature

ü  Jacques Le Goff, Medieval Civilization (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 1990), pp. 131-194 (“The Framework of Time and Space – Tenth to Thirteenth Centuries”)

·         Time, Space, Nature, cont.

ü  Jacques Le Goff, Medieval Civilization (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 1990), pp. 131-194 (“The Framework of Time and Space – Tenth to Thirteenth Centuries”)

TAKE-HOME MIDTERM EXAM DUE: 26 Oct. by Midnight

ü  Children, Parents, Families

Week 9

·         The Discovery of Childhood

ü  Philippe Ariès, Centuries of Childhood: A Social History of Family Life (New York: Vintage Books, 1962), selected pages

·         Women as Mothers and Wives

ü  Duoda, Handbook for her Son, Chapters 1, 4, 5, 10, 11, in Patrick Geary, Readings in Medieval History

ü  Carolyne Larrington (ed.), Women and Writing in Medieval Europe: A Sourcebook, pp. 28-30 (“The Disobedient Wife”)

ü  Intellectual Life

Week 10

·         The Diversified World of Scholars and Students in Medieval Europe

ü  Kathryn Kerby-Fulton, "Taking Early Women Intellectuals and Leaders Seriously"

·         Women as Intellectuals

ü  Christine de Pizan, Defending Women, in Barbara Rosenwein (ed.), Reading the Middle Ages, pp. 497-499

ü  Isotta Nogarola: Of the Equal or Unequal Sin of Adam and Eve, in Bartelett (ed.), The Civilization of the Italian Renaissance, pp. 90-95

ü  War and Violence

Week 11

·         Violence in France and Spain in the Fourteenth Century

ü  David Nirenberg, Communities of Violence: Persecution of Minorities in the Middle Ages (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996), pp. 43-68

·         The First Crusade: Jewish, Muslim and Christian Perspectives

ü  Rabbi Eliezer b. Nathan (“Raban”), O God Insolent Men, in Reading the Middle Ages, ed. by Barbara Rosenwein, pp. 267-271

ü  Stephen of Blois, Letter to His Wife, in Reading the Middle Ages, ed. by Barbara Rosenwein, pp. 271-273

ü  Ibn al-Athir, The First Crusade, in Reading the Middle Ages, ed. by Barbara Rosenwein, pp. 273-277

ü  Women and the Body

Week 12

·         Women and the Flesh

ü  Caroline Walker Bynum, Holy Feast and Holy Fast: The Religious Significance of Food to Medieval Women (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988), pp. 245-259 (“The Meaning of Food: Food as Physicality”), pp. 260-276 (“Women as Body and as Food”) + Intro (pp. 1-9)

·         Feminine Models in the Mirror of Medieval Preachers

ü  Fabrizio Conti, Witchcraft, Superstition, and Observant Franciscan Preachers: Pastoral Approach and Intellectual Debate in Renaissance Milan (Turnhout: Brepols, 2015), pp. 221-237; 271-286

RESEARCH PAPER DUE: 21 November, 11:59 p.m.

ü  The Self

Week 13

·         Augustine’s Confessions or The First Self-Reflection in Western Culture

ü  Augustine of Hippo, Confessions (any editions), Book I, Chapters 8, 9, 12, 13; Book II, Chapters 1, 2, 3, 9; Book VIII, Chapter 12

·         Humanism: A New Perspective on the Individual 

ü  Francis Petrarch, Intro, Letter to Posterity, Letter to the Shade of Cicero, in Kenneth Bartelett (ed.), The Civilization of the Italian Renaissance: A Sourcebook (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2011), pp. 25-34

ü  Conclusions

Week 14

·         Final Group Discussion

ü  Pre-circulated handout

·         Course Review 

Final Exam