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Despite 21st-century fears of an 'epidemic' of loneliness, its history has been neglected. This is the first book on the history of loneliness to be published in English.
'Utterly fascinating, beautifully written, scholarly yet entertaining' Joanna Lumley A pioneering study into how we interpret faces and what they reveal about us, from a world-renowned cultural historian What’s in a face? The face is the only part of the body where all the senses come together and, over the course of human history, has come to represent who we are as individuals. We unlock our phones with facial recognition; we have our faces stamped in our passports; and although our faces may change over the course of our lives – whether through ageing, accident, illness or lifestyle – they remain a foundational marker of identity. In The Face, cultural historian Fay Bound-Alberti ex...
The heart is the most symbolic organ of the human body. Across cultures it is seen as the site of emotions, as well as the origin of life. This book traces the ways emotions have been understood between the 17th and 19th centuries as both physical entities and spiritual experiences.
With wit, insight, and earthy wisdom, a book that explores the nature of the self, the relationship between the brain and the heart, the gendering of our physical and emotional selves, and the struggle to accommodate mind and body, emotions and experience.
Courtship in Georgian England was a decisive moment in the life cycle, often imagined as a tactical game. Sally Holloway uses a rich selection of material and written sources to explore the emotional experience of courtship between Georgian men and women, how love developed into a commercial industry, and what happened when engagements went awry.
Illness in childhood was common in early modern England. Hannah Newton asks how sick children were perceived and treated by doctors and laypeople, examines the family's experience, and takes the original perspective of sick children themselves. She provides rare and intimate insights into the experiences of sickness, pain, and death.
What Is the History of Emotions? offers an accessible path through the thicket of approaches, debates, and past and current trends in the history of emotions. Although historians have always talked about how people felt in the past, it is only in the last two decades that they have found systematic and well-grounded ways to treat the topic. Rosenwein and Cristiani begin with the science of emotion, explaining what contemporary psychologists and neuropsychologists think emotions are. They continue with the major early, foundational approaches to the history of emotions, and they treat in depth new work that emphasizes the role of the body and its gestures. Along the way, they discuss how ideas about emotions and their history have been incorporated into modern literature and technology, from children's books to videogames. Students, teachers, and anyone else interested in emotions and how to think about them historically will find this book to be an indispensable and fascinating guide not only to the past but to what may lie ahead.
It is often taken for granted that holiday resorts sell intangible commodities such as freedom, enjoyment, pleasure, and relaxation. But how did the desire for a 'happy holiday' emerge, how was 'the right to rest' legitimized, and how are emotions produced by commercial enterprises? To answer these questions, The Emotional Economy of Holidaymaking explores the rise of popular holidaymaking in late-nineteenth-century Britain, which is generally considered to be the birthplace of mass tourism. Drawing on a wide range of texts, including medical literature, parliamentary debates, advertisements, travel guides, popular stories, and personal accounts, the book unravels the role emotions played in...
An innovative analytical account of the changing place of emotions in British surgery in the long nineteenth century.
Using interdisciplinary techniques and original research findings, Medicine, Emotion and Disease, 1700-1950 brings together scholars in the history of medicine to address medical theories and beliefs about emotion and disease. It explores such issues as the shift from humoral to nervous interpretations of emotion; the emotional nature of the relationship between medical professionals and their patients; and the extent to which gender might influence the diagnosis, treatment and prognosis of pathological emotional conditions.