Exploring a wide range of material including dramatic works, medieval
morality drama, and lyric poetry this book argues for the central
significance of literary material to the history of emotions.
Early modern English writing about pity evidences a social culture built
specifically around emotion, one (at least partially) defined by worries
about who deserves compassion and what it might cost an individual to
offer it. Pity and Identity in the Age of Shakespeare positions early
modern England as a place that sustains messy and contradictory views
about pity all at once, bringing together attraction, fear, anxiety,
positivity, and condemnation to paint a picture of an emotion that is
simultaneously unstable and essential, dangerous and vital, deceptive
and seductive. The impact of this emotional burden on individual
subjects played a major role in early modern English identity formation,
centrally shaping the ways in which people thought about themselves and
their communities.
Taking in a wide range of material - including dramatic works by William
Shakespeare, Thomas Heywood, Ben Jonson, Thomas Middleton, and William
Rowley; medieval morality drama; and lyric poetry by Philip Sidney,
Thomas Wyatt, Samuel Daniel, Thomas Lodge, Barnabe Barnes, George Rodney
and Frances Howard - this book argues for the central significance of
literary material to the broader history of emotions, a field which has
thus far remained largely the concern of social and cultural historians.
Pity and Identity in the Age of Shakespeare shows that both literary
materials and literary criticism can offer new insights into the
experience and expression of emotional humanity.
