Emotional Alterity in the Medieval North Sea World

This book addresses a little-considered aspect of the study of the history of emotions in medieval literature: the depiction of perplexing emotional reactions. Medieval literature often confronts audiences with displays of emotion that are improbable, physiologically impossible, or simply unfathomable in modern social contexts. The intent of such episodes is not always clear; medieval texts rarely explain emotional responses or their motivations. The implication is that the meanings communicated by such emotional display were so obvious to their intended audience that no explanation was required. This raises the question of whether such meanings can be recovered. This is the task to which the contributors to this book have put themselves. In approaching this question, this book does not set out to be a collection of literary studies that treat portrayals of emotion as simple tropes or motifs, isolated within their corpora. Rather, it seeks to uncover how such manifestations of feelingmay reflect cultural and social dynamics underlying vernacular literatures from across the medieval North Sea world.

Chapter ¿1: Emotional Alterity in the Medieval Northern Sea World.- Chapter 2: Grotesque Emotions in Old Norse Literature: Swelling Bodies, Spurting Fluids, Tears of Hail.- Chapter 3: "Þá fær Þorbirni svá mjök at hann grætr": Emotionality in the Sagas of East Iceland.- Chapter 4: On the Wild Side: "Impossible" Emotions in Medieval German Literature.- Chapter 5: "In an Overfurious Mood": Emotion in Medieval Frisian Law and Life.- Chapter 6: The Vasa Mortis and Misery in Solomon and Saturn II.- Chapter 7: De Profundis: Sadness and Healing.- Chapter 8: The Hagiographers of Early England and the Impossible Humility of the Saints.- Chapter 9: Rageand Lust in the Afterlives of King Edgar the Peaceful.- Chapter 10: 'Shrink Not Appalled from My Great Sorrow': Translating Emotion in the Celtic Revival.