Cultivating the Heart ― Feeling and Emotion in Twelfth- and Thirteenth-century Religious Texts

In the past few years, interest has grown in the way human emotions have been experienced, stimulated, and expressed in languages throughout history.Cultivating the Heart studies the language of emotions in religious texts in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, focusing on sermons, saints’ lives, guidebooks for religious recluses, meditations, and lyrical poetry. It offers, as well, substantial commentary on church wall paintings, providing readers with a nuanced understanding of the ways in which the affective strategies of visual resources can be mapped onto texts. This is the first book-length study of affective language in the High Middle Ages, a period which has been previously neglected in work on the history of emotions.

A. S. Lazikani is a stipendiary lecturer in Old and Middle English literature at the University of Oxford.