Emotions, language and social practice in early modern England

This thesis studies the intersections between emotions, language and social practice in early modern England through the use of a variety of lexicographical, philosophical, didactic and judicial sources. It first identifies and analyses the early modern affective lexicon and the key concepts by which emotions were categorised and understood. The thesis argues that, at this conceptual level, emotions were fundamentally related to action and social practice. It identifies and outlines a historicised theory of practice through which early modern people related emotions to character, motivation, action and the wider social contexts and relationships in which they were situated. As such, by establishing early modern understandings of the place of emotion in social practice, rather than imposing modern sociological or historiographical theories of emotion onto the past, this thesis takes a historicist approach of reading emotions in early modern sources according to the beliefs of people at the time.

Building on these conceptual underpinnings, the second half of the thesis examines didactic literature and judicial records in order to explore the semantics of early modern affective language and how understandings of the emotionality of practice were applied. This approach enables an examination both of the prescribed ideals of appropriate emotional expression and of actual social practice as it was described and contested in different judicial contexts across the period. Therefore, a key achievement of this thesis is that it provides model by which emotions and social practice can be approached by early modern social and cultural historians. By extension, the thesis shows how the history of emotions can be incorporated into early modern history more widely, and how it should not be considered an adjunct or separate field of historical research.