Approaching the Elizabethan concepts of emotion. Emotional vocabulary in the English treatises by Thomas Rogers (1576) and Thomas Wright (1601)
Authors
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Paula Baldwin Lind
Universidad de Los Andes
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2043-9304
Abstract
This article analyzes the notion of emotion in early modern England, specifically throughout the Elizabethan era, from some perspectives of cultural history (Febvre and Burke) and the so-called “affective turn”. First, it identifies the terms that describe and allude to emotions in two of the most representative treatises on the subject, those of Thomas Rogers and Thomas Wright, published in 1576 and 1601, respectively, to verify that the term “emotion”, which describes a certain alteration of mood, does not appear in these sources, as its use in English is later. Both writers choose concepts that they consider synonymous to refer to emotions, whether “feelings”, “perturbations”, “motions”, or “affections”, but, above all, “passions”, which emphasizes the intensity of that which is suffered, although without entirely denying human agency. Secondly, it is established that both sources draw on Hippocratic-Galenic humoral theory and the philosophical heritage of Aristotle and Augustine, among others, but differ in the moral perspective of the emotions, for while Wright professed Catholicism, Rogers adhered to the Protestant Reformation. Finally, it is argued that Elizabethan culture assumes that the male subject not only experiences and expresses emotions in a different way than women, but also that while his emotions are rooted in the brain, liver and spleen, the entire female emotional structure, with its various manifestations, is associated with the womb.Keywords:
English early modern period, Elizabethan era, Emotions, Wright, RogersReferences
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