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 Virgils Aeneid to Chaucers 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.
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 Nightingales Song: Affective Crisis and the
Feminine Cry in Virgils Aeneid and Ovids 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
Shakespeares The Winters Tale.- Chapter 6: The Tears of Rachel: Lament
and Affective Improvisation in Mary Careys Spiritual Dialogue, Meditations,
and Poems.
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).
