Before Emotion
Description
This book brings together scholars working in eleven different classical traditions - Greek, Chinese, Latin, Hebrew, Sanskrit, Arabic, Pali, Hittite, Egyptian, Japanese and Sumerian - to investigate how major texts in these traditions conceptualized, mapped and categorized the sentiments, attitudes and states we think of as emotion. This volume is distinctive in its focus on foundational questions concerning the categorization and conceptualization of emotion. It is also unique in its degree of collaboration among scholars working in different disciplines and in a vast range of ancient traditions. This book aims to build on the resources of these traditions to make an intervention in how we might think about emotions today.
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Persons
David Konstan was a Professor of Classics at New York University and Emeritus Professor at Brown University, USA. His research focused on ancient Greek and Latin literature, especially comedy and the novel, and classical philosophy.
Content
Chapter 1. Introduction.- Chapter 2. The Concept of "Emotion" from Plato to Cicero.- Chapter 3. Pali Buddhist Conceptions of Feeling.- Chapter 4. Out of Aesthetics: Seeing the Emotions in Sanskrit Rasa Theory.- Chapter 5. Emotions as Webs of Connectivity in Early China.- Chapter 6. Doing and Sensing Emotions in the Hebrew Bible: A Philological Approach.- Chapter 7. Hieroglyphic Embodiments and Assemblages of Emotion in Ancient Egypt: A Neurolinguistic Approach.- Chapter 8. Sumerian Terms of Emotions in Light of Current Theories.- Chapter 9. A Sketch of Emotions in Hittite Texts.- Chapter 10. Beneath the Surface: Masking and Feigning in Latin Literature.- Chapter 11. Managing Emotions and Medieval Islamic Piety.- Chapter 12. Mono No Aware in the 11th-century Japanese Literary Classic The Tale of Genji.- Chapter 13. Afterword: "How Many Ages Hence".