At times the only glimpses of affectivity in past societies can be found in their literature. However, the relationship between literary emotion and the affects of flesh-and-blood people has been the subject of much debate. Historians are sometimes wary of using literature as a source for studying the emotional regimes of historical communities, while literary scholars are sometimes content to investigate literature as a sui generis, largely virtual realm of fictional affectivity. Yet literary texts both represent and produce emotions, and to do this, they always need to refer to existing codes of affective behaviour, upholding, subverting, and sometimes, creating them. We will then join the rich debate around the uses of literature for reconstructing historical emotions, and as a starting point for our discussion you are invited to read a study laying out some of these themes: Sif Rikhardsdottir, ‘Medieval emotionality: The feeling subject in medieval literature’, Comparative Literature 69 (2017), 74-90.

This event is organized within the framework of the Emotions Through History Working Group hosted by New Europe College.