The Navigation of Feeling
A Framework for the History of Emotions

Offers a theory that explains the impact of emotions on historical change.

William M. Reddy (Author)

9780521803038, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 10 September 2001

396 pages, 6 b/w illus. 2 tables
22.9 x 15.2 x 2.5 cm, 0.75 kg

'Brilliant and wonderful: this is a book of profound scholarship that will become central to the fast growing interdisciplinary interest in emotion. Reddy bridges psychology, anthropology and history to explore the fascinating idea that emotion is the process that manages the concerns that are most intimate to humankind.' Keith Oatley, University of Toronto

In The Navigation of Feeling: A Framework for the History of Emotions, William M. Reddy offers a theory of emotions which both critiques and expands upon recent research in the fields of anthropology and psychology. Exploring the links between emotion and cognition, between culture and emotional expression, Reddy applies this theory of emotions to the processes of history. He demonstrates how emotions change over time, how emotions have a very important impact on the course of events, and how different social orders either facilitate or constrain emotional life. In an investigation of Revolutionary France, where sentimentalism in literature and philosophy had promised a new and unprecedented kind of emotional liberty, Reddy's theory of emotions and historical change is successfully put to the test.

Preface
Part I. What are Emotions?: 1. Answers from cognitive psychology
2. Answers from anthropology
3. Emotional expression as a type of speech act
4. Emotional liberty
Part II. Emotions in History: France 1700–1850: 5. The flowering of sentimentalism (1700–89)
6. Sentimentalism in the making of the French Revolution (1789–1815)
7. Liberal reason, romantic passions (1815–48)
8. Personal destinies: case material of the early nineteenth century
Conclusion
Appendix A: detailed review of anomalous cases from the Gazette des Tribunaux sample
Appendix B: detailed review of anomalous cases from the Tribunal Civil de Versailles sample
References
Index.

Subject Areas: Psychology [JM], Anthropology [JHM], History [HB]