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E-book
Author Wells, Marion A.

Title Gender, affect, and emotion from classical to early modern literature : afterlives of the Nightingale's song / Marion A. Wells
Published Cham, Switzerland : Palgrave Macmillan, 2023

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Description 1 online resource (396 pages)
Series Palgrave studies in affect theory and literary criticism
Palgrave studies in affect theory and literary criticism.
Contents 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
Summary 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. 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)
Notes Print version record
Subject Affect (Psychology) in literature.
Emotions in literature.
Classical literature -- History and criticism
European letters -- Renaissance, 1450-1600 -- History and criticism
European literature -- 17th century -- History and criticism
Form Electronic book
ISBN 9783031277214
303127721X