ABSTRACT
Studies of emotion are closely tied to debates on the nature of selfhood and identity. What is the person that feels? What motivates emotion (is it just learned behaviour)? And how is emotion used to create different facets of identity (do emotions make you male or female, Protestant or Catholic, or just human)? Answering such questions has required scholars to not only address models for feeling, but to consider how they relate to the self that emotes. For early modern scholars who often work with selves that are conceived quite differently from the present day, this has perhaps been particularly vital. One model for understanding this relationship is that put forward by performance theorists.
