ABSTRACT
By drawing on a broad range of disciplinary and cross-disciplinary expertise, this study addresses the history of emotions in relation to cross-cultural movement, exchange, contact, and changing connections in the later medieval and early modern periods.
All essays in this volume focus on the performance and negotiation of identity in situations of cultural contact, with particular emphasis on emotional practices. They cover a wide range of thematic and disciplinary areas and are organized around the primary sources on which they are based. The edited volume brings together two major areas in contemporary humanities: the study of how emotions were understood, expressed, and performed in shaping premodern transcultural relations, and the study of premodern cultural movements, contacts, exchanges, and understandings as emotionally charged encounters. In discussing these hitherto separated historiographies together, this study sheds new light on the role of emotions within Europe and amongst non-Europeans and Europeans between 1100 and 1800.
The discussion of emotions in a wide range of sources including letters, images, material culture, travel writing, and literary accounts makes Matters of Engagement an invaluable source for both scholars and students concerned with the history of premodern emotions.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
chapter 1|14 pages
Matters of engagement. Emotions, identity, and cultural contact in the Premodern world
part I|56 pages
Letters
chapter 2|31 pages
Bridging the gap
chapter 3|23 pages
An emotional company
part II|80 pages
Images
chapter 4|22 pages
Lust, love and curiosity
chapter 5|28 pages
Santiago Matamoros/Mataindios
chapter 6|28 pages
Riding the juggernaut
part III|44 pages
Materials
chapter 7|19 pages
Robbing the grave
chapter 8|23 pages
Days of wrath, days of friendships
part IV|61 pages
Travel writing
chapter 9|19 pages
“A country where reason does not rule the heart”
part V|75 pages
Literary accounts