General Introduction

Abstract

The history of emotions is a flourishing field that seeks to understand how emotions, and things that resemble them in historic societies, are defined and categorised in different times and places, and what difference that makes to human experience. Historians of emotions are confronted by, and seek to come to grips with, important and challenging questions about the nature of emotions. The methodological spectrum of the history of emotions has expanded to include performative, constructivist and practice theory approaches. Personal experiences of emotions, as this might suggest, are closely associated with ideas about what emotions are and how they work. A key idea in the scholarship of emotions is that some emotions are especially ‘social’ and so designed to mediate group relationships, through providing an emotional connection between individuals. The chapter also presents an overview on the key concepts discussed in this book.