Fluxes: the Early Modern Body and the Emotions

“…In that context, 'the "flow" itself was not merely a fluid, but the juice of life'. 28 Hardened fluxes, in a consequence, affected a man's health as much as his social setting and manhood. The duke, whose bodily integrity Luther had accused, himself responded to this defamation in a pamphlet by stating that he would personally send the reformer 'with a bloody head to the furious devil and his mother, the whore, at the nether hell'.…”

Section: The Matter Of the Body: Face-work In Reformation Germanymentioning

confidence: 99%

Face‐Work: Making Hair Matter in Sixteenth‐Century Central Europe

Hanß

2021

Gender & History

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Bringing gender history, the history of the body and art history into a conversation with material culture studies, this article argues that the sudden fashionability of beards in Renaissance Europe has been intricately linked with a culture of material and visual experimentation. I propose shifting perspectives from a focus on the symbolism of beards towards examining how early modern ways of material engagement with the matter of hair crafted a visual attention to facial hair that made up the sociocultural significance of beards. Focusing on how people made hair matter, I suggest working with the concept of face-work. In particular, this article maps how the Reformation upheavals and the rise of new visual practices dynamised Renaissance protagonists' creative engagement with facial hair as a means for staging the self. Crafting the visual attention to renaissance beardsIn 1610, the Augsburg art dealer Philipp Hainhofer sent a drawing to Philipp II of Pomerania that portrayed the duke with an elegant beard. A close view reveals that the beard was a literally telling attribute as it was composed by pious wordings that visualised Philipp's religious sovereignty. 1 How was it possible, culturally speaking, that beards functioned as speaking attributes in the material Renaissance? To answer this question, this article brings gender history, the history of the body and art history into a conversation with material culture studies. Focusing on beards in sixteenth-century Central Europe, I reconsider the matter of hair in a society which was 'intimately involved with how things were made and what they were made from'. 2 In the Renaissance, craft expertise and the body were significant means through which to experience subjectivity in relation to material and visual cultures of making. 3 This observation invites historians to rethink the significance of hair in regard to the embodied aspects of a material and visual culture that made up the Renaissance symbolic universe. I thus propose a shift of perspective in research on the history of hair. While previous scholarship has focused on the symbolic meanings of hair, I examine how early modern ways of material engagement with the matter of hair crafted a visual attention to facial hair that made up the sociocultural significance of beards. 4 Instead of solely focusing on the symbolism of hair in sixteenth-century Central Europe, I focus on how people made hair matter. I argue that the increasing fashionability of beards in the Renaissance has been intricately linked with an age of material and visual experimentation and the

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“…It was clearly situated in the continually-changing context of a relationship to the world whose precise effect was never stable or predictable, so that one simply had to submit to it – to the terror that froze the blood, the sudden trembling, bleeding, or urination that literally stopped the ambassador Bushecq in his tracks. ( 2002 , 2) As a result, humoural theory provided rich figurative languages of ebbs and flows. To illustrate the vast differences between the ‘natural’ physiological processes described by the cognitive linguists in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, and that of the eighteenth century and earlier, take Hervey's 1731 description of his sister's suffering.…”

Section: Humoural Physiologymentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Humoural Physiologymentioning

confidence: 99%

Pain: metaphor, body, and culture in Anglo-American societies between the eighteenth and twentieth centuries

Bourke

2014

Rethinking History

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This article explores the relationship between metaphorical languages, body, and culture, and suggests that such an analysis can reveal a great deal about the meaning and experience of pain in Anglo-American societies between the eighteenth and twentieth centuries. It uses concepts within embodied cognition to speculate on how historians can write a history of sensation. Bodies are actively engaged in the linguistic processes and social interactions that constitute painful sensations. Language is engaged in a dialogue with physiological bodies and social environments. And culture collaborates in the creation of physiological bodies and metaphorical systems.

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Fluxes: the Early Modern Body and the Emotions

Cited by 34 publications

References 8 publications

Cultural geography: the busyness of being `more-than-representational'

Cultural geography: the busyness of being `more-than-representational'

Face‐Work: Making Hair Matter in Sixteenth‐Century Central Europe

Pain: metaphor, body, and culture in Anglo-American societies between the eighteenth and twentieth centuries

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