This monograph examines three aesthetic emotions in Ælfric's 'Lives of Saints'. Drawing on recent research on emotional communities, this research combines methods from Cognitive Sciences and other studies on early Medieval English language and literature in order to explore Ælfric's usage of the terms in the lexical domain of amazement. The main aim of this study is to identify preferred modes of expression that would reveal a series of emotional rules in the context of Ælfric's emotional community. Looking into Ælfric's usage of this lexical domain and how he depicts emotion dynamics in these texts, this monograph shows how the emotion family of amazement is central to the hagiographical genre, and it highlights important emotion-regulation scripts that operate in these texts.
Author(s): Francisco Javier Minaya Gómez
Series: Studies in English Medieval Language and Literature, 62
Publisher: Peter Lang
Year: 2022
Language: English
Pages: 240
City: Berlin
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1. Emotions of 'amazement': What are they? How can they be studied in literary texts?
1.1. Some notes on the study of emotion
1.2. Categorising emotions: Where did the study of aesthetic emotions begin?
1.3. Aesthetic emotions today: Current research and contemporary theories
1.4. Emotions of 'amazement'
2. The study of emotion in literature: Looking into 'amazement' in hagiography
2.1. Cultural and literary models for wonder
2.2. Theoretical and methodological notes on the study of emotion in literature and hagiography in the Middle Ages
2.3. Medieval hagiography in context
3. Old English Hagiography and the lexical field of 'amazement': Sources and resources
3.1. Description of the corpus
3.2. Description of the lexical field of 'amazement' in Old English
3.3. Corpus lookups and data treatment
4. Aesthetic pleasure and the sublime: Ælfric’s approach to pleasant personal experience, the beautiful and 'the sublime'
4.1. Ælfric’s treatment of sensory data in aesthetic experience
4.2. Usage of the lexical domain of 'the sublime'
4.3. Experiencing 'the sublime'
5. Wonderful and miraculous experiences and the lexical domain of 'wonder' in Ælfric’s 'Lives of Saints'
5.1. Earthly, human, and secular experiences of 'wonder'
5.2. Divine and spiritual 'wonder'
5.3. Ælfric’s approach to the miraculous
6. The lexical domain of 'awe' and 'fear': Aesthetic fear in Ælfric’s 'Lives of Saints'
6.1. Utilitarian 'fear' and 'awe' as real-life emotional responses
6.2. Awe and the God-fearing Christian
6.3. 'fear' and 'awe' as pagan responses to the miraculous
Concluding Remarks
Bibliography
