‘Who Will Write the History of Tears?’ History of Ideas and History of Emotions from Eighteenth-Century France to the Present

2013 ◽  
Vol 40 (4) ◽  
pp. 516-532 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marco Menin
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
History Of Ideas ◽  
History Of Emotions ◽  
History Of

scholarly journals The Materiality of English Suicide Letters, c. 1700 – c. 1850

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-28
Author(s):  
Ella Sbaraini
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Emotional Distress ◽  
History Of Emotions ◽  
Social Lives ◽  
Writing Practices ◽  
The Poor ◽  
The Press ◽  
History Of ◽  
Insight Into

Abstract Scholars have explored eighteenth-century suicide letters from a literary perspective, examining issues of performativity and reception. However, it is fruitful to see these letters as material as well as textual objects, which were utterly embedded in people's social lives. Using thirty manuscript letters, in conjunction with other sources, this article explores the contexts in which suicide letters were written and left for others. It looks at how authors used space and other materials to convey meaning, and argues that these letters were epistolary documents usually meant for specific, known persons, rather than the press. Generally written by members of the ‘lower orders’, these letters also provide insight into the emotional writing practices of the poor, and their experiences of emotional distress. Overall, this article proposes that these neglected documents should be used to investigate the emotional and material contexts for eighteenth- and nineteenth-century suicide. It also argues that, at a time when the history of emotions has reached considerable prominence, historians must be more attentive to the experiences of the suicidal.

Fear and Its Opposites in the History of Emotions

Facing Fear ◽  
2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Max Weiss
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Cultural Analysis ◽  
Fear Response ◽  
History Of Emotions ◽  
Weimar Germany ◽  
History Of ◽  
Philosophy Of Emotion ◽  
Historical Moment ◽  
Anxiety And Fear

This book examines the “problem” of fear in its intellectual, social, and political incarnations. It situates fear in world-historical terms, thus breaking new ground in the historical and cultural analysis of emotions. Each contributor is specifically concerned with a discrete historical moment, thereby emphasizing the variability and contingency of fears past, present, and future. Examples of such moments are the experience of fear among eighteenth-century rebels, priests, and colonial administrators in Peru; the universal fear response evoked by the Thirty Years War; and the technologically mediated experiences of anxiety and fear collectively felt by cinemagoers in Weimar Germany. This introduction discusses some of the lineaments of the history and philosophy of emotion as it pertains to the problem of fear, highlighting counterpoints or analogues to fear such as comfort, assurance, and hope.

scholarly journals pre-eighteenth-century traditions of revivalism: damascus in the thirteenth century

2005 ◽  
Vol 68 (2) ◽  
pp. 195-214 ◽  
Author(s):  
konrad hirschler
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Social History ◽  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
History Of Ideas ◽  
Contemporary Society ◽  
Current State ◽  
History Of ◽  
State Of Affairs ◽  
Large Sections

this article examines whether it is possible to trace eighteenth- and nineteenth-century revivalist thought to earlier ‘medieval’ examples. the discussion is centred on the issue of ijtiha¯d/taqli¯d, which featured prominently in revivalist thought. taking the example of scholars in thirteenth-century damascus, it firstly compares the respective readings of ijtiha¯d/taqli¯d, by focusing on one individual, abu¯ sha¯ma (d. 1267). it secondly asks whether a scholar like abu¯ sha¯ma, who had adopted a reading similar to later revivalists, also took a critical and oppositional stand against large sections of his contemporary society, i.e. a revivalist posture. it is this article's main contention that the example of abu¯ sha¯ma shows the need to study in more detail possible revivalist traditions prior to the ‘grand’ movements. the combination of the history of ideas and social history might allow a deeper understanding of how and in what contexts calls for reform and opposition to the current state of affairs were expressed.

scholarly journals The Conceptual Foundations of the Modern Idea of Government in the British Eighteenth Century: A Distributional Concept Analysis

2019 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 619-652 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter de Bolla ◽  
Ewan Jones ◽  
Paul Nulty ◽  
Gabriel Recchia ◽  
John Regan
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
History Of Ideas ◽  
Computer Assisted ◽  
Digital Archives ◽  
Scale Reading ◽  
Reading Methods ◽  
Human Scale ◽  
History Of ◽  
Mixed Approach ◽  
Conceptual Foundations

This essay sets out a new method for the history of ideas. Using a mixed approach combining computer assisted reading methods with more traditional close reading, the essay tracks the evolution of a set of terms over the eighteenth century that have become central to how we think about government in particular and political concepts in general. The essay is offered as an example of how data mining very large digital archives allows us to see trends and patterns that are invisible at the granular level of human scale reading, and it proposes that these largescale observations can both complement and complicate our hitherto analogue histories of ideas. The findings of this mixed approach indicate that ‘despotism’ functioned as a type of gate in an electronic circuit, sometimes allowing the connection to liberty and government and on others blocking those connections. Most significantly ‘despotism’ is shown to be an essential ingredient in the conceptual foundations of a theory of rights, liberty and government in the period and that this structure underpins contemporary theories of government.

Noi credevamo (We Believed): Story and history of emotions

2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 211-223 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alejandro Patat
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
The Other ◽  
History Of Emotions ◽  
Historical Film ◽  
Late Eighteenth Century ◽  
Late Eighteenth ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Subject ◽  
New Interpretation ◽  
The One

In the last ten years, Noi credevamo (We Believed) (Martone 2010) has been the subject of a very careful criticism interested not only in its historical-ideological implications but also in its semiotic specificities. The purpose of this article is to summarize the cardinal points of these two positions and to add to them some critical observations that have not been noted so far. On the one hand, it is a matter of highlighting how, as a historical film, the work is connected with the history of emotions, a recent historiographical trend that aims to detect the narrative devices of ideological propaganda and the diffusion of feelings since the late eighteenth century. On the other hand, the article proposes a new interpretation of Mario Martone’s film, starting with the analysis of phenomena that are not only historical but also technical and structural.

scholarly journals Calm and Violent Passions: The Genealogy of a Distinction from Quintilian to Hume

2018 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 55-81
Author(s):  
Kirk Essary ◽  
Yasmin Haskell
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Literary Tradition ◽  
History Of Emotions ◽  
Rhetorical Tradition ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
History Of ◽  
Scholarly Attention

While the distinction between the calm and violent passions has been treated by Hume scholars from a number of perspectives relevant to the Scottish philosopher’s thought more generally, little scholarly attention has been paid to this distinction either in the works of Hume’s non-English contemporaries (e.g., the French Jesuit Pierre Brumoy) or in the long rhetorical and literary tradition which often categorized the emotions as either calm or violent. This article examines the long history of the distinction between calm and violent, or mild and vehement, emotions from the classical Roman rhetorical tradition through the Renaissance and into the modern period. In doing so, it provides a partial but substantial genealogy of an important heuristic taxonomy in the history of emotions, while suggesting that the philosophical import of the distinction in the eighteenth century owes something to rhetorical and poetic traditions which are often not considered by historians of philosophy.

Electric Signals: Emotional Currents, Cultural Conduits, Social Voltage and Power Generation in Eighteenth-Century Cultural Encounters

2019 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 47-71
Author(s):  
Nicole Eustace
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Cross Cultural ◽  
Cultural Encounters ◽  
History Of Emotions ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Natural Philosophers ◽  
Cultural Negotiations ◽  
Electric Signals ◽  
Current Resistance

Abstract In the middle of the eighteenth century, natural philosophers began to posit connections between emotion and electricity. The metaphors they explored then have continued methodological implications for scholars today. The electrical concepts of current, resistance, voltage, and power, provide an extended metaphor for conceptualising the history of emotions in ways that usefully bridge the biological and cultural, the individual and social, in order to more fully reveal historical links between emotion and power. By way of example, this article examines cross-cultural negotiations of power made possible through the expression, exchange, and evaluation of grief as recorded in the diary of a British-American Quaker woman who lived among Indians in the Pennsylvania borderlands in the midst of the Seven Years’ War.

Domesticating Religious “Fanaticism” in Eighteenth-Century Germany

2018 ◽  
Vol 98 (1) ◽  
pp. 111-138
Author(s):  
Simon Grote
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Historical Perspective ◽  
History Of Ideas ◽  
Commercial Success ◽  
History Of ◽  
Stark Contrast ◽  
The University

Abstract The decline of “fanaticism” in eighteenth-century Germany, a myth propagated by self-proclaimed proponents of Enlightenment, continues to shape historians’ representations of the ascendancy of “religious” Enlightenment. To discredit this myth and suggest a means of replacing it, this essay departs from the conventional attention to university theology as a history of ideas and proposes adding a book-historical perspective. Its focus is the German Pietist theologian Joachim Lange (1670–1744). Condemned by critics as a “fanatic” by virtue of his alleged intellectual kinship with French Reformed theologian Pierre Poiret (1646–1719), Lange is best known today for his vehement and ultimately ineffectual opposition to Enlightenment’s theological standard-bearers at the University of Halle. But Lange’s kinship with Poiret was only partial, and the stark contrast between the careers of two of Lange’s textbooks reveals that although his theological star was falling by the 1730s, elements of Lange’s ostensibly outmoded theology continued to find an audience into the nineteenth century, through the enormous commercial success of his Latin grammar.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document