General introduction

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. Scholars working in this area have come from a range of disciplines – history, art history, music, film studies, theatre, philosophy, literary studies, linguistics, anthropology, sociology, and more – producing an array of studies that deploy a wide variety of sources and methodological approaches. As with other historical topics, there is no single type of source useful for uncovering emotions. Rather emotions, or something like them, can be found in most areas of life and so can be found in all sorts of source materials. This four-volume collection of sources for the history of emotions provides a diverse range of sources that survive for Europe and its empires between 1517 and 1914.