1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910805582003321

Autore

Wells Marion A.

Titolo

Gender, Affect, and Emotion from Classical to Early Modern Literature : Afterlives of the Nightingale’s Song / / by Marion A. Wells

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Cham : , : Springer International Publishing : , : Imprint : Palgrave Macmillan, , 2023

ISBN

9783031277214

303127721X

Edizione

[1st ed. 2023.]

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (317 pages)

Collana

Palgrave Studies in Affect Theory and Literary Criticism, , 2634-632X

Disciplina

636.005

Soggetti

European literature - Renaissance, 1450-1600

Classical literature

Literature, Ancient

Literature - Philosophy

Women - History

Early Modern and Renaissance Literature

Classical and Antique Literature

Literary Theory

Women's History / History of Gender

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Nota di contenuto

Chapter 1: From Passive Matter to Embodied Affects: Gendering Emotion in the Classical Tradition.-Chapter 2 :Towards an Early Modern Affect Theory: Christian Stoicism and the Augustinian Will in Medieval and Early Modern Thought -- Chapter 3: The Nightingale’s Song: Affective Crisis and the Feminine Cry in Virgil’s Aeneid and Ovid’s Metamorphoses -- Chapter 4: “In Her Swough”: Thwarted Affect and the Maternal Body in Petrarch, Chaucer, and Christine de Pisan  -- Chapter 5: The Return of the Shrew: Sibylline Rage in Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale -- Chapter 6: The Tears of Rachel: Lament and Affective Improvisation in Mary Carey’s Spiritual Dialogue, Meditations, and Poems.

Sommario/riassunto

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. 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).