Gender, Affect, and Emotion from Classical to Early Modern Literature: Afterlives of the Nightingales Song (Palgrave Studies in Affect Theory and Literary Criticism)

Drawing both on historical accounts of the emotions and on contemporary affect theory, this book explores the intersection of social constructions of sex and gender with the development of norms for emotive speech in literary texts from the classical to the early modern periods. More specifically, the book argues that the influential Stoic theory of the prepassions (as distinct from the passions proper) resonates richly with recent work on affect, emphasizing in similar ways the role of embodied feelings that may exceed available linguistic norms as well as challenging gendered emotion scripts. From the tragic Stoicism of Virgil’s Aeneid to Chaucer’s Stoic-Petrarchan Griselda and the Stoic-inflected attitudes reflected in the work of seventeenth century poet Mary Carey, the Stoic view of the emotions as test-cases for a moralized conception of masculine coherence conflicts with a fluid affective model of feeling that challenges the ideal of emotional self-containment. Acknowledgements Contents 1 Introduction From Affect to Emotion Performing Emotives Notes 2 From Passive Matter to Embodied Affects: Gendering Emotions in the Classical Tradition “Matter Too Soft a Lasting Mark to Bear”: Femininity, Passivity, and the Passions Masculine Coherence and Stoic Apatheia “Subject to the Will”: Assenting to Passion Falling Bodies: Affects and the Stoic Prepassions Eat Your Groans: Affect, Voice, and Emotive Notes 3 Toward an Early Modern Affect Theory: Christian Stoicism and the Augustinian Will in Medieval and Early Modern Thought From Passions to Affects: Toward an Early Modern Affect Theory Notes 4 The Nightingale’s Song: Weaving Affects in Virgil’s Aeneid from the Trojan Women to Euryalus’s Mother In One Voice: Trojan Women on Fire Amata, Allecto, and the “Rabid Mouth” of Female Frenzy The Nightingale’s Song: Women’s Weaving and the “Ululatus” of Tragedy Notes 5 “Though Me Were Looth”: Translating Affect and the Maternal Body in Chaucer’s “The Clerk’s Tale” Clothing and the Translation of Affect Assent and the Scandal of the Speaking Body Translating Feeling: Bodies, Loathness, and Death Frames of Reference: Power and “Pley” Willing and Nilling: Virtual Affects and the Loss of “One’s Own” Androgynous Apatheia: Prosthetic Defenses Against Emotion Assaying “Sadness” in the Pregnant Body “Swowning ... Lyk a Mother”: Interrupted Promises Notes 6 “When You Are Gentle”: Emotional Exercitives and Affective Injustice in Taming of the Shrew Performing Power in the Induction “Will You, Nill You”: Linguistic Silencing and Emotional Exercitives Canceling Emotives: Becoming Petruccio’s “Owene Thing” “I Know You Have a Stomach”: Destabilizing Affects from Within Concocting the Passions: Digestion, Venting, and Transpiration in Words “My Tongue Will Tell the Anger of My Heart”: Venting, Voice, and Heartbreak The Body Speaks: Froward Rhythms and Troubling Rhyme Notes 7 The Tears of Rachel: Lament and Affective Improvisation in Mary Carey’s Life Narrative and Poetry Affect and Affliction: The Body Speaks Effeminate Lamentation: Carey’s Emotional Community Rachel’s Voice: A Bitter Mourning Now Let Me Die: Poetic Emotives and Lament Notes 8 Reflections on Everyday Affective Injustice Notes Bibliography Index The recent surge of interest in affect and emotion has productively crossed disciplinary boundaries within and between the humanities, social sciences, and sciences, but has not often addressed questions of literature and literary criticism as such. The first of its kind, Palgrave Studies in Affect Theory and Literary Criticism seeks theoretically informed scholarship that examines the foundations and practice of literary criticism in relation to affect theory. This series aims to stage contemporary debates in the field, addressing topics such as: the role of affective experience in literary composition and reception, particularly in non-Western literatures; examinations of historical and conceptual relations between major and minor philosophies of emotion and literary experience; and studies of race, class, gender, sexuality, age, and disability that use affect theory as a primary critical tool.