A History of Feelings

(Hardback)

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What does it mean to feel something What stimulates our desires, aspirations, and dreams Did our ancestors feel in the same way as we do In a wave of new research over the past decade, historians have tried to answer these questions, seeking to make sense of our feelings, passions, moods, emotions, and sentiments. For the first time, however, Rob Boddice brings together the latest findings to trace the complex history of feelings from antiquity to the present. A History of Feelings is a compelling account of the unsaid the gestural, affective, and experiential. Arguing that how we feel is the dynamic product of the existence of our minds and bodies in moments of time and space, Boddice uses a progressive approach that integrates biological, anthropological, and social and cultural factors, describing the transformation of emotional encounters and individual experiences across the globe. The work of one of the world's leading scholars of the history of emotions, this epic exploration of our affective life will fascinate, enthrall, and move all of us interested in our own well-being anyone with feeling.

Reviews

"A History of Feelings is an incisive, innovative, provocative book of unequaled scope. In it, Boddice shows his fluency and facility not just with multiple languages, archaic and modern, but also with a vast body of scholarship distributed across several disciplines, including psychology; neuroscience; the history of medicine; rhetoric; and, of course, the history of emotions. This impressive volume should interest intellectual and emotional historians and historians of science. One would hope it would also attract the attention of psychologists, who would gain much from it."--Susan J. Matt "History Journal"

Author Bio

Rob Boddice is a Marie Sklodowska Curie Global Fellow based at Freie Universitt Berlin and McGill University in Montreal. He is a fellow of the Royal Historical Society and the author of The History of Emotions, Pain: A Very Short Introduction, and The Science of Sympathy: Morality, Evolution and Victorian Civilization.