Beyond melancholy : sadness and selfhood in Renaissance England / Erin Sullivan.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Sullivan, Erin (Cultural historian), author.

Contributor:

Horace Howard Furness Memorial Library (University of Pennsylvania)

Series:

Emotions in history

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

English literature--Early modern, 1500-1700--History and criticism.

English literature.

Sadness in literature.

Grief in literature.

English literature--Early modern.

Medicine in Literature.

Emotions.

Grief.

Medical Subjects:

Medicine in Literature.

Emotions.

Grief.

Genre:

Criticism, interpretation, etc.

Physical Description:

xiv, 227 pages : illustrations (black and white) ; 24 cm.

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

Oxford, United Kingdom : Oxford University Press, 2016.

Summary:

From William Shakespeare's Hamlet to Robert Burton's Anatomy to Nicholas Hilliard's miniatures, melancholy has long been associated with the emotional life of Renaissance England. But what other forms of sadness existed alongside, or even, beyond, melancholy, and what kinds of selfhood did they help create? Beyond Melancholy explores the vital distinctions Renaissance writers made between grief, godly sorrow, despair, and melancholy, and the unique interactions these emotions were thought to produce in the mind, body, and soul. While most medical and philosophical writings emphasized the physiological and moral dangers of the 'dis-ease' of sadness, warning that in its most extreme form it could damage the:; body and even cause death, new Protestant teachings about the nature of devotion and salvation suggested that sadness could in fact be a positive, even transformative, experience, helping to humble believers' souls and bring them closer to God. The result of such dramatically conflicting paradigms was a widespread ambiguity about the value of sadness and a need to clarify its significance through active and wilful interpretation-something this book calls 'emotive improvisation'. Drawing on a wide range of Renaissance medical, philosophical, religious, and literary texts-including, but not limited to, moral treatises on the passions, medical text books, mortality records, doctors' case notes, sermons, theological-acts, devotional and elegiac poetry, letters, life-writings, ballads, and stage-plays-Beyond Melancholy explores the emotional codes surrounding the experience of sadness and, the way writers responded to and reinterpreted them. In doing so it demonstrates the value of working across source materials too often divided along disciplinary lines, and the special importance of literary texts to the study of the emotional past. Book jacket.

Contents:

1 Sadness, Selfhood, and Dis-ease 16

2 Grief: Passion, Action, and the Possibility of Self-knowledge 50

3 Melancholy: Humorous Identity and the Allure of Genius 87

4 Godly Sorrow: Feeling Faith and the Broken-down Heart 126

5 Despair: Narrative Authority and the Drama of Doubleness 163.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 203-222) and index.

ISBN:

9780198739654

0198739656

OCLC:

945569596