ABSTRACT
Medieval emotions was one of three “current trends in history and theory” showcased in a panel at the 2016 meetings of the Medieval Academy of America, and at the center of this session, and the lively discussion it provoked, was the work of Barbara H. Rosenwein.1 From the 1998 publication of her volume Anger’s Past, Rosenwein has both critiqued the assumptions underpinning studies of medieval emotions and developed her own methodological and theoretical approach to the history of emotions.2 One can see some glimmerings of this interest in the inner life and its outward expression in her very first published article on Cluniac liturgy as ritual aggression,3 but in truth her road to the history of emotions passed through other topics. Rosenwein’s scholarship is rich and varied, full of experimentation and exploration of ideas, methodologies, and sources. While it is less common to encounter such a diversity of interests in one career, several characteristics and themes prominent in Rosenwein’s work are more broadly representative of developments in medieval studies over the second half of the twentieth century and the opening decade and a half of the twenty-first. The interdisciplinarity of her scholarship, its emphases on religion and other aspects of society, and its focus on social groups, are more widely evident in recent approaches to the medieval past. Both the broader resonance and impact of Rosenwein’s work, moreover, make manifest the enduring value of focusing on social groups and interactions.
