Emotion in Context

The author suggest that emotions should be examined in the context of the emotional community.  Rosenwein says, “Thus an important part of my method is to gather a dossier of materials (almost always written sources) that belong together because they point to an identifiable group…”  (Rosenwein, 26)  I agree with her point coupled with the her next claim that gestures, exclamations, tears and so on are all symptoms of emotions.  The author is asserting that the person feeling emotion is acting within their own community of emotion and the historian or scholar must examine the symptom and produce an interpretation.  When this is applied to a text such as Julian of Norwich we can begin to uncover first her emotional community and second how these emotions function with or against her setting.  This method allows for scholars to analitacally based on the emotion of a person within their context greater than previous interpretations.

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