Compassion in Early Modern Literature and Culture
Feeling and Practice

Explores how early modern Europeans responded to suffering and asks how they both described and practised compassion.

Kristine Steenbergh (Edited by), Katherine Ibbett (Author)

9781108818025, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 22 June 2023

317 pages
22.9 x 15.2 x 1.7 cm, 0.462 kg

'Its commendable coherence is determined by both the central theme and the well-thought-through structure, which supports the topic's conceptualization … the volume is a valuable contribution on a timely topic …' Miros?awa Hanusiewicz-Lavallee, Journal of Jesuit Studies

This collection is an enquiry into compassion as an early modern emotional phenomenon, situating it within the complexity of European economic, social, cultural and religious tensions. Drawing on recent work in the history of emotions, leading scholars consider the particularities of early modern compassion, demonstrating its entanglements with diverse genres and geographies. Chapters on canonical and less familiar works explore tragedy, comedy, sermons, philosophy, treatises on consolation, medical writing, and dramatic theory, showing how early modern compassion shaped attitudes and social structures that remain central to the way we imagine our response to suffering today, and how such investigations can ultimately provoke new ways of thinking about community in contemporary Europe.

Introduction Kristine Steenbergh and Katherine Ibbett
Part I. Theorizing: 1. The ethics of compassion in early modern England Bruce R. Smith
2. The compassionate self of the Catholic Reformation Katherine Ibbett
Part II. Consoling: 3. 'Hee left them not comfortlesse by the way': grief and compassion in early modern English consolatory culture Paula Barros
4. Friendship, counsel, and compassion in early modern medical thought Stephen Pender
Part III. Exhorting: 5. 'Compassion and mercie draw teares from the godlyfull often': the rhetoric of sympathy in the early modern sermon Richard Meek
6. Mollified hearts and enlarged bowels: practising compassion in reformation England Kristine Steenbergh
Part IV. Performing: 7. Civic liberties and community compassion: the Jesuit drama of Poland-Lithuania Clarinda E. Calma and Jolanta Rzegocka
8. Compassion, contingency and conversion in James Shirley's The Sisters Alison Searle
Part V. Responding: 9. Mountainish inhumanity in Illyria: compassion in Twelfth Night as social luxury and political duty Elisabetta Tarantino
10. Standing on a beach: Shakespeare and the sympathetic imagination Eric Langley
Part VI. Giving: 11. 'To feel what wretches feel': Reformation and the re-naming of English compassion Toria Johnson
12. Alms petitions and compassion in sixteenth-century London Rebecca Tomlin
Part VII. Racializing: 13. Pity and empire in the Brevísima relación de la destrucción de las Indias (1552) Matthew Goldmark
14. 'Our Black hero': compassion for friends and others in Aphra Behn's Oroonoko John Staines
Part VIII. Contemporary Compassions: 15. Contemporary compassions: interrelating in the Anthropocene Kristine Steenbergh.

Subject Areas: Early modern history: c 1450/1500 to c 1700 [HBLH], Literary studies: fiction, novelists & prose writers [DSK], Literary studies: plays & playwrights [DSG], Literary studies: poetry & poets [DSC], Literary studies: c 1500 to c 1800 [DSBD], Literature: history & criticism [DS]