Emotions as the Language of Romance

doi:10.1017/9781108783033.012

10 - Emotions as the Language of Romance

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 May 2023

Megan Moore

Edited by

Roberta L. Krueger

Show author details

Roberta L. Krueger: Affiliation:
Hamilton College, New York

Book contents

Get access

Summary

This chapter argues that emotions are a way of practicing community, that feeling rules delineate the boundaries of what is acceptable and who can be part of the communities imagined within medieval romance. Attentiveness to the diction of emotions offers a new and potentially rich avenue of inquiry into how courtly readers imagined connection. Emotion words function like a contract between people: they negotiate, enact, and destroy relationships. And in romance, these utterances most frequently misfire, sowing confusion, misunderstanding, and, most of all, despair among the lovers and knights who are propelled to repair the damage of these misperformances to their relationships. Emotional misfirings – the moments where love fails, or where shame, anger, and grief take over – are the very building blocks through which romance negotiates and narrates elite communities.

Keywords

history of emotions grief widows love

Type: Chapter
Information: The New Cambridge Companion to Medieval Romance , pp. 150 - 166

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108783033.012 [Opens in a new window]

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Print publication year: 2023

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Suggestions for Further Reading

Ahmed, Sara. Cultural Politics of Emotion. 2nd ed. New York: Routledge, 2014.CrossRef Google Scholar

Bataille, Georges. Erotism: Death and Sensuality. Translated by Mary Dalwood. San Francisco: City Lights Books, 1962.Google Scholar

Boquet, Damien and Nagy, Piroska (eds.). Medieval Sensibilities: A History of Emotions in the Middle Ages. Translated by Robert Shaw. Cambridge: Polity Press, 2018.Google Scholar

Brandsma, Frank, Larrington, Carolyne, and Saunders, Corinne (eds.). Emotions in Medieval Arthurian Literature: Body, Mind, Voice. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2015.Google Scholar

Burger, Glenn D. and Crocker, Holly A. (eds.). Medieval Affect, Feeling, and Emotion. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019.CrossRef Google Scholar

Derrida, Jacques. The Work of Mourning. Ed. Brault, Pascale-Anne and Naas, Michael. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 2001.Google Scholar

Dufallo, Basil and Peggy, McCracken (eds.) Dead Lovers: Erotic Bonds and the Study of Premodern Europe. Ann Arbor, MI: The University Press of Michigan, 2006.Google Scholar

Jaeger, Stephen. Ennobling Love: In Search of a Lost Sensibility. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999.Google Scholar

Nussbaum, Martha. Upheavals of Thought: The Intelligence of Emotions. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001.Google Scholar

Reddy, William M. The Making of Romantic Love: Longing and Sexuality in Europe, South Asia, and Japan, 900–1200 CE. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, 2012.Google Scholar

Rosenwein, Barbara. Emotional Communities in the Early Middle Ages. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2006.Google Scholar