Overview
- Integrates affect theory into historicized study of the emotions in classical, medieval, and early modern literary texts
- Explores the historical (and ongoing) impact of gender on the development of norms for emotive speech
- Develops a theory of affective injustice
Part of the book series: Palgrave Studies in Affect Theory and Literary Criticism (PSATLC)
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Table of contents (8 chapters)
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Front Matter
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Back Matter
Keywords
About this book
Drawing both on historical accounts of the emotions and on contemporary affect theory, this book explores the intersection of social constructions of sex and gender with the development of norms for emotive speech in literary texts from the classical to the early modern periods. More specifically, the book argues that the influential Stoic theory of the prepassions (as distinct from the passions proper) resonates richly with recent work on affect, emphasizing in similar ways the role of embodied feelings that may exceed available linguistic norms as well as challenging gendered emotion scripts. From the tragic Stoicism of Virgil’s Aeneid to Chaucer’s Stoic-Petrarchan Griselda and the Stoic-inflected attitudes reflected in the work of seventeenth century poet Mary Carey, the Stoic view of the emotions as test-cases for a moralized conception of masculine coherence conflicts with a fluid affective model of feeling that challenges the ideal of emotional self-containment.
Authors and Affiliations
About the author
Marion A. Wells is Henry N. Hudson Professor of English at Middlebury College, USA. Her previous publications include The Secret Wound: Love Melancholy and Early Modern Romance (Stanford UP, 2007).
Bibliographic Information
Book Title: Gender, Affect, and Emotion from Classical to Early Modern Literature
Book Subtitle: Afterlives of the Nightingale’s Song
Authors: Marion A. Wells
Series Title: Palgrave Studies in Affect Theory and Literary Criticism
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-27721-4
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan Cham
eBook Packages: Literature, Cultural and Media Studies, Literature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)
Copyright Information: The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023
Hardcover ISBN: 978-3-031-27720-7Published: 25 January 2024
Softcover ISBN: 978-3-031-27723-8Due: 25 February 2024
eBook ISBN: 978-3-031-27721-4Published: 24 January 2024
Series ISSN: 2634-6311
Series E-ISSN: 2634-632X
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: XI, 309
Number of Illustrations: 1 b/w illustrations
Topics: Early Modern/Renaissance Literature, Classical and Antique Literature, Literary Theory, History, general