Tijdschrift voor Geschiedenis - Volume 126, Issue 4, 2013

it describes have a history? Because they are intuitively recognizable and anchored in the body, emotions can appear as a universal human feature, present throughout the ages. Recent research into their history, however, shows that emotions and their expression have changed considerably over time. Not only the norms and expectations regarding emotive language have changed, but also the corporeal perfor Read More

This paper investigates religious women of the tenth and early eleventh centuries who relied on bodily expression to criticize the conduct of their fellow sisters. Relying on a habitus that referred to the centrality of the body in early medieval rules, these individuals appear to have relied on a gender-neutral mode of reformist agency that nonetheless provided affirmative arguments for male prejudices about women’s moral a Read More

The Devotio Moderna was one of the most important movements of religious reform in the late Middle Ages, especially in the Low Countries and the northern parts of the Rhineland. The new devout attached particular importance to the daily process of spiritual progress through good deeds, meditations, spiritual exercises, and continuous building of the self via self-examination and mutual correction. In accordance with their Read More

This article studies emotions and the bodily expression of emotions present in the martyr stories in Tasso’s contemporary history (1583). Tasso was a member of the observant Franciscans and drew on several sources for his compilation of stories of the martyrdom of his fellow brothers in the Netherlands, France, and the British isles. This article studies the observant Franciscans as an ‘emotional community’ (Barbara Rosenwei Read More

This article examines physical representation of pain on the early modern stage, taking as its starting point the genre of martyr tragedy. It considers one tragedy, La Macchabée (1596) by Jean de Virey. Analysis of its dramaturgical structures and the modalities of representation of this specific genre suggest a double hypothesis: (1) martyr tragedy cannot be understood without taking into account its links with the medie Read More

This article investigates the connections between theatre and politics during the Patriotic and Batavian revolutions from the perspective of the history of emotions. In order to understand differences and shifts in emotional styles among the Dutch revolutionaries, it explores the semantic field of two closely interlinked concepts crucial to their emotional culture: passion (drift) and political enthusiasm (geestdrift). Late eighteenth Read More

the six authors – all students or recent graduates – had made a walking tour of several weeks through the German countries. Their search for the beauties of nature explains their preference for the walking stick over the horse carriage. The travel report offers an emotional description of nature and landscape. Following historians of the ‘emotional turn’ in the belief that emotions are – at least in part – social and cultural co Read More

My book on Dutch popular opinion towards the persecution of the Jews makes three points: first, that Gentiles were not indifferent, but indignant about it; second, that Jews and Gentiles realized the Germans were intent on exterminating the Jews, but could not imagine the speed with which this would happen; and third, that this is relevant because it was imaginable that, the Germans being on the verge of defeat, deportatio Read More