Foundations of Feeling
Theorizing Emotions in Late Medieval Literature
Format:Paperback
Publisher:The University of Chicago Press
Publishing:14th Sep '26
£24.00
This title is due to be published on 14th September, and will be despatched as soon as possible.
A fresh reading of medieval literature as deeply concerned with thinking about feelings.
Are emotions primarily bodily or cognitive? Do “natural” emotions exist? What is the relationship between emotion and gender? In Foundations of Feeling, Jessica Rosenfeld shows how medieval literature informs contemporary ideas about how emotions operate. Ranging widely from love poetry to pastoral and theological writings, to political satire and more, Rosenfeld reveals a wealth of attention to emotions in both scientific and philosophical discourses of the time. By mining Latin, medieval French, and Middle English traditions, she relates medieval concerns to the most central, current debates (and impasses) in the fields of history of emotion and affect theory today, reframing how we think about and define feelings.
“Foundations of Feeling reveals the connections between literature and philosophy, between gender, affect, ethics, and politics. In the sometimes-difficult space of incommensurability provided and constituted by literary works, readers may imagine possibilities and find resources for ethical and political change. Rosenfeld’s work is theoretically ambitious and imaginative, grounded in insightful and sensitive analyses of examples drawn from a wide range of texts, genres, periods, and sociolinguistic contexts.”
-- Daisy Delogu, The University of Chicago“Foundations of Feeling is a welcome contribution to the history of emotions. Rosenfeld’s account attends to an impressive diversity of medieval writing on these topics. Her careful and conceptually rich method enables readers to recover a host of insights useful for affect theory and for rethinking certain periodizing assumptions.”
-- Patricia Clare Ingham, Indiana University, Bloomington“In this powerful study, Rosenfeld analyzes how medieval literature articulates the structure of emotional experience by foregrounding the way humans process their emotions as they shape narratives and express responses to events. Foundations of Feeling bristles with intelligence and originality on every page. It is deeply learned in its understanding of medieval tradition, astute and enlivening in its readings of medieval texts, and written with engaging clarity.”
-- Stephanie Trigg, University of MelboISBN: 9780226850498
Dimensions: unknown
Weight: 454g
304 pages