Cheerfulness A Literary and Cultural History by Timothy Hampton

Cheerfulness A Literary and Cultural History by Timothy Hampton

A timely story of a forgotten emotion

Cheerfulness: A Literary and Cultural History tells a new story about the cultural imagination of the West wherein cheerfulness -- a momentary uptick in emotional energy, a temporary lightening of spirit -- functions as a crucial theme in literary, philosophical, and artistic creations from early modern to contemporary times. In dazzling interpretations of Shakespeare and Montaigne, Hume, Austen and Emerson, Dickens, Nietzsche, and Louis Armstrong, Hampton explores the philosophical construal of cheerfulness -- as a theme in Protestant theology, a focus of medical writing, a topic in Enlightenment psychology, and a category of modern aesthetics. In a conclusion on cheerfulness in pandemic days, Hampton stresses the importance of lightness of mind under the pressure of catastrophe. A history of the emotional life of European and American cultures, a breathtaking exploration of the intersections of culture, literature, and psychology, Cheerfulness challenges the dominant narrative of Western aesthetics as a story of melancholy, mourning, tragedy, and trauma. Hampton captures the many appearances of this fleeting and powerfully transformative emotion whose historical and literary trajectory has never before been systematically traced.

Timothy Hampton is Professor of Comparative Literature and French at University of California, Berkeley. He is the author, most recently, of Fictions of Embassy: Literature and Diplomacy in Early Modern Europe.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9781942130604
ISBN 10	1942130600
Title	Cheerfulness A Literary and Cultural History
Author	Timothy Hampton
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Hardback
Publisher	Zone Books
Year published	2022-05-24
Number of pages	272
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.