1st Edition
Managing Emotion in Byzantium Passions, Affects and Imaginings
Byzantinists entered the study of emotion with Henry Maguire’s ground-breaking article on sorrow, published in 1977. Since then, classicists and western medievalists have developed new ways of understanding how emotional communities work and where the ancients’ concepts of emotion differ from our own, and Byzantinists have begun to consider emotions other than sorrow. It is time to look at what is distinctive about Byzantine emotion.
This volume is the first to look at the constellation of Byzantine emotions. Originating at an international colloquium at Dumbarton Oaks, these papers address issues such as power, gender, rhetoric, or asceticism in Byzantine society through the lens of a single emotion or cluster of emotions. Contributors focus not only on the construction of emotions with respect to perception and cognition but also explore how emotions were communicated and exchanged across broad (multi)linguistic, political and social boundaries. Priorities are twofold: to arrive at an understanding of what the Byzantines thought of as emotions and to comprehend how theory shaped their appraisal of reality.
Managing Emotion in Byzantium will appeal to researchers and students alike interested in Byzantine perceptions of emotion, Byzantine Culture, and medieval perceptions of emotion.
1 Introduction
Margaret Mullett
2 Theorising Emotions: Methodological Tools for Research
Maria G. Xanthou
3 The Neighbour’s Unbearable Wellbeing: Phthonos/Envy from the Classical to the Modern Greek World
Martin Hinterberger
4 Compassion and Healing in Early Byzantium
Susan Wessel
5 Managing Affect through Rhetoric: The Case of Pity
Georgia Frank
6 Epithet and Emotion: Reflections on the Quality of Eleos in the Mother of God Eleousa
Annemarie Weyl Carr
7 Storge: Rethinking Gendered Emotion apropos of the Virgin Mary
Niki Tsironis
8 An Early Christian Understanding of Pride
Robin Darling Young
9 The Ascetic Construction of Emotions: Lupe and Akedia in the Works of Evagrios of Pontos
Andrew Crislip
10 Katepheia: From Heroic Failure to Christian Dejection
Aglae Pizzone
11 Emotional Communities and the Loss of an Individual: The Case of Grief
Maria Doerfler
12 Grief and Joy in Byzantine Art
Henry Maguire
13 Liturgical Emotion: Joy and Complexity in a Hymn of Romanos the Melodist for Easter
Derek Krueger
14 Apolausis: Feelings at the Juncture between Body and Mind
Alicia Walker
15 Poetry in Emotion: The Case of Anger
Floris Bernard
16 Power and Fear: Awe before the Emperor in Byzantium
Sergey A. Ivanov
Biography
Margaret Mullett, Honorary Professor, School of History, Classics and Archaeology, University of Edinburgh; former Director of Byzantine Studies, Dumbarton Oaks, Washington DC.
Susan Ashbrook Harvey, Willard Prescott and Annie McClelland Smith Professor of History and Religion, Brown University.
‘… an exceptional volume that will captivate and hold immense appeal to researchers, scholars, and students alike. The essays within the book are exemplary and thought-provoking contributions affording readers invaluable insights that enrich our comprehension of emotions in Byzantium’ - Porphyra, September 2023.
