Anger's Past

by Barbara H. Rosenwein

• ISBN13: 9780801432668
• ISBN10: 0801432669
• Format: Nonspecific Binding
• Copyright: 2018-10-18
• Publisher: Cornell University Press

Summary

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 s

Table of Contents

Illustrations	vii	(2)
Acknowledgments	ix	(2)
Abbreviations	xi
Introduction	1	(8)
BARBARA H. ROSENWEIN
Part I. Monks and Saints	9	(50)
1. Anger in Monastic Curses	9	(27)
LESTER K. LITTLE
2. Gertrude's furor: Reading Anger in an Early Medieval Saint's Life	36	(23)
CATHERINE PEYROUX
Part II. Kings and Emperors	59	(68)
3. Ira Regis: Prolegomena to a History of Royal Anger	59	(16)
GERD ALTHOFF
4. "Just Anger" or "Vengeful Anger"? The Punishment of Blinding in the Early Medieval West	75	(17)
GENEVIEVE BUHRER-THIERRY
5. What Did Henry III of England Think in Bed and in French about Kingship and Anger?	92	(35)
PAUL HYAMS
Part III. Lords and Peasants	127	(64)
6. The Politics of Anger	127	(26)
STEPHEN D. WHITE
7. "Zealous Anger" and the Renegotiation of Aristocratic Relationships in Eleventh- and Twelfth-Century France	153	(18)
RICHARD E. BARTON
8. Peasant Anger in the Late Middle Ages	171	(20)
PAUL FREEDMAN
Part IV. Celts and Muslims	191	(42)
9. Anger and the Celtic Saint	191	(12)
WENDY DAVIES
10. From Anger on Behalf of God to "Forbearance" in Islamic Medieval Literature	203	(30)
ZOUHAIR GHAZZAL
Part V. Conclusions	233	(15)
11. Controlling Paradigms	233	(15)
BARBARA H. ROSENWEIN
Contributors	248	(3)
Index	251