A pressing question facing literary scholars who are working on emotion is that of what literary analysis and literary history can bring to the history of emotions. While disciplines such as psychology, anthropology, linguistics and various branches of history have made notable contributions to the study of emotions past and present, precisely how imaginative literature might fit into emotion studies remains unclear. This essay suggests that attention to the tropes and forms with which literature performs its imagining may be the best way to incorporate literature into the history of emotions. I focus in particular on how personification in Middle English texts translates abstract emotions into bodily terms in order to represent them as embodied phenomena and to elicit emotional responses. By examining the personification of emotions in these texts, we can see how imaginative literature might both shape and constitute emotional practice.Truth cantering on a powerful horse, Chastity, eyes downcast, fluttering with veils. Each one was marble come to life, a thought in a coat, Courtesy bowing with one hand always extended, Villainy sharpening an instrument behind a wall, Reason with her crown and Constancy alert behind a helm. They are all retired now, consigned to a Florida for tropes. A pressing question facing literary scholars who are working on emotion is that of what literary analysis and literary history can bring to the history of emotions. While disciplines such as psychology, anthropology, linguistics and various branches of history have made notable contributions to scholarship on emotions past and present, precisely how imaginative literature might fit into emotion studies remains unclear. One way of demonstrating imaginative literature's value to the study of emotions would be to consider its tools and building blocks: how do specific forms and tropes enable authors to evoke, represent or stimulate emotion, and what can this tell us about how emotion is perceived to operate? In this essay, I propose that one particular literary device used frequently in mediaeval literature -personification -demonstrates how imaginative literature might shape (or even function as) 'emotional practice' (Scheer). As a literary trope that relies in part on a shared understanding of sensory and bodily phenomena, personification represents emotions as something brought into being by the body as well as the mind and uses sensory language to shape the emotions of readers.
As well as describing dishonor itself, the Middle English word ‘shame’ can refer either to the emotion resulting from an awareness of dishonor or disgrace, or to the anticipation of dishonor, the potential for disgrace to be experienced. Late‐medieval English literature reveals the interrelation between the personal experience of shame and the way it is produced in relation to others, typically through such kinds of exposure as showing and telling. This essay draws attention to the complex ways in which shame is imagined in late‐medieval English literature. It begins by considering the two major focal points of late‐medieval shame studies so far: chivalric literature and Christian shame. After surveying the approaches that have been taken to date, it suggests new themes that deserve critical attention in these areas. The remainder of this essay points to other literary contexts in which we might investigate shame more closely. While chivalric and devotional texts are significant areas in which shame was imagined, medical, conduct, and advisory texts also engage with the concept of shame in important ways.
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