Medieval Affect, Feeling, and Emotion

Provides a new, intersectional investigation of affects, feelings, and emotions in late Middle English literature.

Glenn D. Burger (Edited by), Holly A. Crocker (Edited by)

9781108471961, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 11 April 2019

264 pages, 4 b/w illus.
23.5 x 15.8 x 1.5 cm, 0.56 kg

'… excellent collection …' Barbara Zimbalist, Studies in the Age of Chaucer

Representations of feeling in medieval literature are varied and complex. This new collection of essays demonstrates that the history of emotions and affect theory are similarly insufficient for investigating the intersection of body and mind that late Middle English literatures evoke. While medieval studies has generated a rich scholarly literature on 'affective piety', this collection charts an intersectional new investigation of affects, feelings, and emotions in non-religious contexts. From Geoffrey Chaucer to Gavin Douglas, and from practices of witnessing to the adoration of objects, essays in this volume analyze the coexistence of emotion and affect in late medieval representations of feeling.

Introduction Glenn D. Burger and Holly A. Crocker
1. Weeping like a beaten child: figurative language and the emotions in Chaucer and Malory Stephanie Trigg
2. Imagining Jewish affect in the Siege of Jerusalem Patricia DeMarco
3. Engendering affect in Hoccleve's Series Holly A. Crocker
4. Becoming one flesh, inhabiting two genders: ugly feelings and blocked emotion in the Wife of Bath's Prologue and Tale Glenn D. Burger
5. Accounting for affect in the Reeve's Tale Brantley L. Bryant
6. Affect machines Sarah Salih
7. Witnessing and legal affect in the York Trial plays Emma Lipton
8. Affecting forms: theorizing with The Palis of Honoure Anke Bernau
Afterword: three letters Anthony Bale.

Subject Areas: Medieval history [HBLC1], Literary studies: classical, early & medieval [DSBB]