Emotion and Genre in Medieval European Literature

This volume explores the interaction between emotion (as a literary phenomenon) and genre in medieval European literature. It draws on the field of the history of emotion to consider how the representation of emotion in literary works shapes generic expectations and signals generic frameworks. Alternatively, it considers how generic perceptions and conventions modulate or impact the emotive codes or styles used to convey the narrative matière.The volume presents a cross-cultural analysis of the various generic forms and their emotive codes in the linguistic and cultural traditions of Western Europe in the Middle Ages. In combining the methodological and theoretical perspectives of genre criticism and emotion studies for the first time in a systematic way, this volume is meant to fill a major gap in scholarship.Ranging across a wide array of literatures, including religious writings in Latin and Middle English, Old French lais, Old Norse saga literature, Middle High German Minnesang, and the medieval romance writ large, it aims to give insight into the ways in which generic frameworks and emotive codes interacted in giving shape to literary texts across medieval Europe.