Anger's Past: The Social Uses of an Emotion in the Middle Ages

Barbara H. Rosenwein

Cornell University Press, 1998 - Family & Relationships - 256 pages

Books have rarely been written about the history of any emotion except love and shame, and this volume is the very first on the meaning of anger in the Middle Ages. Well aware of modern theories about the nature of anger, the authors consider the role of anger in the social lives and conceptual universes of a varied and significant cross-section of medieval people: monks, saints, kings, lords, and peasants. They are careful to distinguish between texts (the sources on which historians must rely) and the reality behind the texts. They are sensitive, as well, to the differences between ideals and normative behavior.

The first eight essays in the volume focus on anger in the Latin West, while the last two turn to the fringes of Europe (the Celtic and Islamic worlds) for purposes of comparison. Barbara H. Rosenwein concludes the volume with an essay on modern conceptions of anger and their implications for understanding its role in the Middle Ages. The essays reveal much that is new about medieval rituals of honor and status and illuminate the rationales behind such seemingly irrational practices as cursing, feuding, and the punishment of blinding.

Contributors: Gerd Althoff, University of Münster; Richard E. Barton, Yale University; Geneviéve Bührer-Thierry, University of Marne-la-Vallée; Wendy Davies, University College London; Paul Freedman, Yale University; Zouhair Ghazzal, Loyola University, Chicago; Paul Hyams, Cornell University; Lester K. Little, Smith College; Catherine Peyroux, Duke University; Barbara H. Rosenwein, Loyola University, Chicago; Stephen D. White, Emory University

Contents

• Introduction: 1
• Prolegomena to a History of Royal Anger: 59
• Just Anger or Vengeful Anger? The Punishment of Blinding: 75
• The Politics of Anger: 127
• Zealous Anger and the Renegotiation of Aristocratic: 153
• Peasant Anger in the Late Middle Ages: 171
• Anger and the Celtic Saint: 191
• From Anger on Behalf of God to Forbearance in Islamic: 203
• Controlling Paradigms: 233

About the author

Barbara H. Rosenwein is Professor of History at Loyola University Chicago. She is the author of Negotiating Space: Power, Restraint, and Privileges of Immunity in Early Medieval Europe and To Be the Neighbor of Saint Peter: The Social Meaning of Cluny's Property, 909-1049, editor of Anger's Past: The Social Uses of an Emotion in the Middle Ages and coeditor of Monks and Nuns, Saints and Outcasts: Religion in Medieval Society, all from Cornell. She is also the editor of the Cornell series Conjunctions of Religion and Power in the Medieval Past.

Bibliographic information

• Title: Anger's Past: The Social Uses of an Emotion in the Middle Ages; Cornell paperbacks; European history, medieval and renaissance studies
• Editor: Barbara H. Rosenwein
• Edition: illustrated
• Publisher: Cornell University Press, 1998
• ISBN: 0801432669, 9780801432668
• Length: 256 pages
• Subjects: Family & Relationships / Anger; History / Europe / Medieval; Psychology / Emotions; Self-Help / Self-Management / Anger Management; Social Science / Sociology / General