...query the existence and "distinctive profile" of an early modern European "emotional universe" (1). The editors also make an explicit claim for the "crucial perspective" that "students and scholars of early modern creative expression" bring to "the study of emotion more generally," through their recognition of historical changes and continuities. Challenging current scientific and philosophical approaches that would deny cultural variation or the very existence of a discrete category of phenomena identifiable as emotions, they rightly claim that for those who would understand human history and experience, "the emotions require no justification as a subject in their own right" (3). This does not of course erase the difficulty of establishing the exact parameters of "the passions" or "affections" (what we call emotions), and the collection journeys in many directions: from gestures to metaphors, medical treatises to dramatic scripts, sounds to Stoicism and civic theory. That there is a tendency to invoke materialism, and Galenic humoralism in particular, as the fundamental vocabulary for interpreting early modern emotions will not surprise those familiar with the editors' notable contributions to the revival of interest in this topic. However, they also make room for compelling chapters on the religious, philosophical, and political debates over the proper control and role of the passions and for meditations on the phenomenological and literary performance of emotion. Although most of the contributors are English professors, the volume as a whole is especially valuable in gesturing across art forms (music, painting, theater) and beyond the boundaries of Britain.

The organization of essays within the volume is not immediately transparent from the general titles of its three parts: "Early Modern Emotion Scripts"; "Historical Phenomenology"; "Disciplinary Boundaries." In their introduction, the editors draw upon the work of cultural linguist Anna Wierzbicka to clarify that they wish to distinguish between our own normative "cultural scripts" (e.g., core emotions are expressed in the face, they well up from inside us, etc.) and those of the early modern period. In other words, they are interested in unveiling the conditions of possibility for identifying and evaluating emotions within that culture. As a result, they do not work from the inherited taxonomies of Cicero or Aquinas and assign a chapter each to, say, love, fear, pleasure, anger, and so forth, but instead begin with four chapters that address the ways in which early moderns located emotions as a class, a kind of meta-analysis that...

NOTE: All illustrations and photos have been removed from this article.



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