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‘Who Will Write the History of Tears?’ History of Ideas and History of Emotions from Eighteenth-Century France to the Present

2013; Routledge; Volume: 40; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/01916599.2013.826430

1873-541X

Marco Menin,

Historical Art and Culture Studies

SummaryThe aim of this article is to shed light on the methodological relationship between the history of ideas and the history of emotions, starting from the conception of weeping in the eighteenth-century French reflection. This period was critical for the defining of the modern concept of emotion because it encompassed the development of a new aesthetic and moral code centred on the exasperation of sensitivity and an exaggerated use of tears. This study brings out, in terms of methodology, the importance that the analysis of tears assumed from two points of view: on the one hand, it places the problem in a framework determined by history and culture (the object of study for the history of emotions); on the other, it recognises the unavoidable axiological and moral element that characterised crying (the object of study for the history of ideas). After a brief reconstruction of the discussion of tears in the history of emotion—from the histoire des mentalités to the ‘emotional turn’—and in the history of ideas, respectively, the article outlines some potential areas for research in an interdisciplinary perspective.Keywords: Tearscryingweepinghistory of emotionemotionalityhistory of ideasFranceeighteenth century AcknowledgementsI would like to thank Matthew Armistead for translating this article into English. My grateful thanks go also to Manuela Albertone, Massimo Mori, Germana Pareti and Enrico Pasini; they have generously furnished criticisms and comments which have helped improve this article.Notes1 See Das weinende Saeculum, edited by Klaus Bartèolke (Heidelberg, 1983).2 For studies on weeping in the seventeenth century, see Sheila Page Bayne, Tears and Weeping: An Aspect of Emotional Climate Reflected in Seventeenth-Century French Literature (Tübingen, 1981); Jean-Loup Charvet, L'éloquence des larmes (Paris, 2000).3 ‘My purpose was not to explain the passions as an Orator, or as a Philosopher, but merely as a Physician’; see René Descartes, Les passions de l’âme, in Œuvres complètes, edited by Charles Adam and Paul Tannery, 11 vols (Paris, 1964–1974), XI, 326. All translations by Matthew Armistead.4 Descartes, Les passions de l'âme, in Œuvres complètes, XI, 423.5 Marin Cureau de la Chambre, Les charactères des passions. Dernier volume (Amsterdam, 1662), 2.6 Cureau de la Chambre, Les charactères des passions, 18.7 Cureau de la Chambre, Les charactères des passions, 10.8 A similar date has been accepted as the beginning of the concept by other historians; see Daniel Mornet, La pensée française au XVIIIesiècle (Paris, 1926); Pierre Trahard, Les maîtres de la sensibilité française au 18esiècle, 1715–1789, 4 vols (Paris, 1931–1933).9 Paul Victor de Sèze, Recherches physiologiques et philosophiques sur la sensibilité ou la vie animale (Paris, 1786), 17. See also Sergio Moravia, ‘From Homme Machine to Homme Sensible: Changing Eighteenth-Century Models of Man's Image’, Journal of the History of Ideas, 39 (1978), 45–60. On this fundamental change in the paradigm, see also Jessica Riskin, Science in the Age of Sensibility: The Sentimental Empiricists of the French Enlightenment (Chicago, IL, 2002); Stephen Gaukroger, The Collapse of Mechanism and the Rise of Sensibility: Science and the Shaping of Modernity, 1680–1760 (Oxford, 2011).10 ‘Emotion’ [entry], in Encyclopédie ou dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers, 17 vols (Paris 1751–1765), V, 572.11 ‘Pleurs’ [entry], in Encyclopédie ou dictionnaire raisonné, XII, 765. It is interesting to observe that the entry belongs to the metaphysical sphere and not, as one might have thought from a Cartesian perspective, to that of physiology or anatomy, which is what happened instead to the entry ‘Larmes’; see ‘Larmes’ [entry], in Encyclopédie ou dictionnaire raisonné, IX, 295.12 Voltaire, Questions sur l'Encyclopédie par des amateurs, 6 vols. (Geneva, 1775), IV, 51.13 Voltaire, Questions sur l'Encyclopédie, IV, 51.14 Jules Michelet, Histoire de France: Louis XV, 1724–1757 (New York, NY, 2005, first published in Paris, 1866), 433.15 Denis Diderot, La religieuse, in Œuvres complètes, edited by Herbert Dieckmann, Jean Fabre, Jean Varloot and Jacques Proust, 33 vols (Paris, 1975–2004), XI, 231. For a deeper analysis of this text, may I refer the reader to Marco Menin, ‘Le lacrime di Suzanne. La sensibilità tra moralità e patologia nella Religieuse di Diderot’, Rivista di storia della filosofia, 2 (2013). 227–51.16 See Anne Deneys-Tunney, Écritures du corps. De Descartes à Laclos (Paris, 1992), 131–91.17 Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Dialogues, in Œuvres complètes, edited by Bernard Gagnebin and Marcel Raymond, 5 vols (Paris, 1959–1995), I, 826. I have gone deeper into the moral explanation of weeping given by Rousseau in Marco Menin, ‘L'ambiguïté des larmes: Rousseau et la moralité de l’émotion’, L'Esprit créateur, 52(4) (2012), 107–19.18 Donatien-Alphonse-François de Sade, Idée sur les romans, in Œuvres complètes, edited by Annie Le Brun and Jean-Jacques Pauvert, 15 vols (Paris, 1966), X, 12–13.19 The debate on vapours can be placed with a certain precision, in that it was carried out in a dozen treatises published in little more than thirty years: this in fact began in 1756 with the Dissertation sur les vapeurs et les pertes de sang (Paris) by Pierre Hunauld, and ended in approximately 1789 with the Recherches sur les vapeurs (London and Paris) by Joseph Bressy.20 Rousseau, Confessions, in Œuvres complètes, I, 247.21 Bernardin de Saint-Pierre, Études de la nature, XII, in Œuvres complètes, edited by Louis Aime-Martin, 12 vols (Paris, 1818), V, 10.22 André Monglond, Le préromantisme français, 2 vols (Paris, 1965), II, 318.23 See Robert Wokler, ‘From L'Homme Physique to L'Homme Moral and Back: Towards a History of Enlightenment Anthropology’, History of the Human Sciences, 6(1) (1993), 121–38.24 Jean-Étienne Dominique Esquirol, Des passions: considérées comme causes, symptômes et moyens curatifs d'aliénation mentale (Paris, 1805), 12–13.25 Jean-Étienne Dominique Esquirol, Des maladies mentales considérées sous les rapports médical, hygiénique et médico-légal, 2 vols (London, 1838), I, 43.26 Tom Lutz, Crying: The Cultural and Natural History of Tears (New York, NY, 1999), 26.27 Roland Barthes, Sur Racine, in Œuvres complètes: 1962–1967, edited by Eric Marty (Paris, 2002), 79.28 Barthes, Sur Racine, in Œuvres complètes, 81.29 Roland Barthes, Fragments d'un discours amoureux, in Œuvres complètes: 1974–1980, edited by Eric Marty (Paris, 1980), 327.30 See Lucien Febvre, Le problème de l'incroyance au XVIesiècle: la religion de Rabelais (Paris, 1942); Lucien Febvre, Autour de l'Heptaméron. Amour sacré, amour profane (Paris, 1944).31 Lucien Febvre, ‘La sensibilité et l'histoire: comment reconstituer la vie affective d'autrefois?’, Annales d'histoire sociale, 3 (1941), 5–20 (7).32 Febvre, ‘La sensibilité et l'histoire’, 7–8.33 See Febvre, ‘La sensibilité et l'histoire’, 13–17.34 See Robert Mandrou, Introduction à la France moderne: essai de psychologie historique (Paris, 1961), 383. The only specific contributions on sensibility were for a long time these two: Arthur M. Wilson, Jr., ‘Sensibility in France in the Eighteenth Century: A Study in Word History’, French Quarterly, 13 (1931), 35–46; Trahard, Les maîtres de la sensibilité française.35 See Robert Mandrou, ‘Histoire sociale et histoire des mentalités’, La Nouvelle Critique, 49 (1972), 41–44; Alphonse Dupront, ‘Problèmes et méthodes d'une histoire de la psychologie collective’, Annales: Economies, Sociétés, Civilisations, 1 (1961), 3–11; Georges Duby, ‘L'histoire des mentalités’, in L'histoire et ses méthodes, edited by Charles Samaran (Paris, 1961), 937–66. On the use of Febvre's in the ideas of other French historians, see Stuart Clark, ‘French Historians and Early Modern Popular Culture’, Past and Present, 100(1) (1983), 62–99.36 Peter N. Stearns and Carol Z. Stearns, ‘Emotionology: Clarifying the History of Emotions and Emotional Standards’, The American Historical Review, 90 (1985), 813–36 (816).37 Stearns and Stearns, ‘Emotionology’, 813.38 Stearns and Stearns, ‘Emotionology’, 813.39 Stearns and Stearns, ‘Emotionology’, 836.40 It should be remembered that Peter Stearns himself founded, in 1967, The Journal of Social History and directed the series The History of Emotions, now defunct, published by the New York University Press.41 Stearns and Stearns, ‘Emotionology’, 836. The same concept was repeated by Peter Stearns in a 1993 essay: ‘Historical research on emotion generates important new data, evaluative tools, and theoretical perspectives for emotions research more generally’; see Peter N. Stearns, ‘History of Emotions: Issues of Change and Impact’, in Handbook of Emotions, edited by Michael Lewis and Jeannette M. Haviland-Jones (New York, NY, 1993), 16–29 (26).42 See Peter Stearns and Timothy Haggerty, ‘The Role of Fear: Transitions in American Emotional Standards for Children, 1850–1950’, The American Historical Review, 96 (1991), 63–94; Peter N. Stearns, American Fear: The Causes and Consequences of High Anxiety (New York, NY, 2006).43 See Jan Plamper, ‘The History of Emotions: An Interview with William Reddy, Barbara Rosenwein, and Peter Stearns’, History and Theory, 49(2) (2010), 237–65.44 William M. Reddy, The Navigation of Feeling: A Framework for the History of Emotions (Cambridge, 2001), 128. The term ‘emotives’ was introduced in William M. Reddy, ‘Against Constructionism: The Historical Ethnography of Emotions’, Current Anthropology, 38 (1997), 327–51.45 See Reddy, Navigation of Feeling, 128–29.46 Plamper, ‘History of Emotions’, 247.47 For an outline of the immense critical literature, I limit myself to referring the reader to Daniel M. Gross, The Secret History of Emotion: From Aristotle's Rhetoric to Modern Brain Science (Chicago, IL, 2006); Jerome Kagan, What is Emotion? History, Measures, and Meanings (New Haven, CT, 2007). See also Reading the Early Modern Passions: Essays in the Cultural History of Emotion, edited by Gail Kern Paster, Katherine Rowe and Mary Floyd-Wilson (Philadelphia, PA, 2004). One should also remember the space given by neuroscience to the ‘emotional brain’; see Joseph LeDoux, The Emotional Brain: The Mysterious Underpinnings of Emotional Life (New York, NY, 1996).48 The last outline of the critical literature of the history of emotions was, to my knowledge, the one set out by Susan J. Matt, ‘Current Emotion Research in History: Or, Doing History from the Inside Out’, Emotion Review, 3 (2011), 117–24.49 Barbara H. Rosenwein, ‘Worrying about Emotion in History’, The American Historical Review, 107 (2002), 821–45; Barbara H. Rosenwein, ‘Problems and Methods in the History of Emotions’, Passions in Context, 1 (2010), 1–32.50 These ‘are precisely the same as social communities […] but the researcher looking at them seeks above all to uncover systems of feeling: what these communities (and the individuals within them) define and assess as valuable or harmful to them; the evaluations that they make about others' emotion; the nature of the affective bonds between people that they recognize; and the modes of emotional expression that they expect, encourage, tolerate, and deplore’; see Rosenwein, ‘Worrying about Emotion in History’, 835.51 Rosenwein, ‘Problems and Methods in the History of Emotions’, 1, 24.52 Plamper, ‘History of Emotions’, 249.53 Arthur O. Lovejoy, The Great Chain of Being: A Study of the History of an Idea (Cambridge, MA, 2001), 16.54 Lovejoy, The Great Chain of Being, 4.55 Lovejoy, The Great Chain of Being, 7. This concept is also put forward in Arthur O. Lovejoy, ‘Reflections on the History of Ideas’, Journal of the History of Ideas, 1 (1940), 3–23 (5).56 This assimilation is not obviously valid according to ‘universalist theories’, which find in emotion a universal and immutable biological fact, and which are the principal object of polemics in the history of emotions. One of the classic contributions to this line of argument is that of Paul Ekman and Wallace V. Friesen, ‘Constants across Cultures in the Face and Emotion’, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 17 (1971), 124–39. A recent reaffirmation of this theory can be found in Marc D. Pell, Laura Monetta, Silke Paulmann and Sonja A. Kotz, ‘Recognizing Emotions in a Foreign Language’, Journal of Nonverbal Behavior, 33 (2009), 107–120.57 This point of view can be used to interpret the last book by Reddy, which sets out to reconstruct the conception of love in apparently dissimilar environments, such as medieval France, India and Japan; see William M. Reddy, The Making of Romantic Love: Longing and Sexuality in Europe, South Asia, and Japan (Chicago, IL, 2012).58 Reddy, The Making of Romantic Love, 19.59 Anne Vincent-Buffault, Histoire des larmes, XVIIIe–XIXesiècles (Paris, 1986).60 Vincent-Buffault, Histoire des larmes, 33.61 For a detailed analysis of the letters in question, see Marco Menin, ‘Lettres en larmes: Rousseau et la rhétorique de l’émotion dans l'autoreprésentation épistolaire’, in Zwischen Vielfalt und Imagination: Praktiken der Jean-Jacques Rousseau-Rezeption / Entre hétérogénéité et imagination: Pratiques de la réception de Jean-Jacques Rousseau, edited by Jesko Reiling and Daniel Tröhler (Geneva and Paris, 2013), 21–39.62 Anne Coudreuse, Le goût des larmes au XVIIIesiècle (Paris, 1999).63 Coudreuse, Le goût des larmes, 3.64 See Daniel Mornet, Le romantisme au XVIIIesiècle (Geneva, 2000); Trahard, Les maîtres de la sensibilité française; Jean Ehrard, L'idée de nature en France dans la première moitié du XVIIIesiècle (Paris, 1963); Robert Mauzi, L'idée du bonheur dans la littérature et la pensée françaises au XVIIIesiècle (Paris, 1960).65 Among the most recent contributions of a sociological nature or aimed at investigating contemporary popular culture, see Judith Kay Nelson, Seeing Through Tears: Crying and Attachment (New York, NY, 2005); Peter Schwenger, The Tears of Things: Melancholy and Physical Objects (Minneapolis, MN, 2006); Henry Jenkins, The Wow Climax: Tracing the Emotional Impact of Popular Culture (New York, NY, 2007); On the Verge of Tears: Why the Movies, Television, Music, Art, Popular Culture, Literature, and the Real World Make Us Cry, edited by Michele Byers and David Lavery (Cambridge, 2010).66 See Peter N. Stearns, Old Age in European Society: The Case of France (New York, NY, 1976).67 Reddy, Navigation of Feeling, 106. When he needs to make more precise references to the study of tears, Reddy usually turns, apart from the previously cited study by Vincent-Buffault, to the following two works: Sarah C. Maza, Private Lives and Public Affairs: The Causes Célèbres of Pre-Revolutionary France (Berkeley, CA, 1993); David Denby, Sentimental Narrative and the Social Order in France, 1760–1820 (Cambridge, 1994).68 Plamper, ‘History of Emotions’, 242.69 Plamper, ‘History of Emotions’, 258.70 See Morale et vertu au siècle des lumières, edited by Henri Plard (Brussels, 1986); Jacques Domenech, L’éthique des Lumières. Les fondements de la morale dans la philosophie française du XVIIIesiècle (Paris, 1989); Jacques Domenech, ‘Vertu’ [entry], in Dictionnaire européen des Lumières, edited by Michel Delon (Paris, 1997), 1085–88.71 Lovejoy, The Great Chain of Being, 14.72 On the circularity between philosophical and medical thought, see Peter Gay, ‘The Enlightenment as Medicine and as Cure’, in The Enlightenment: An Interpretation, 2 vols (New York, NY, 1967–1969), II, 12–23; Paul Astruc, ‘Les sciences médicales et leurs représentations dans l’Encyclopédie’, Revue d'histoire des sciences, 4 (1951), 359–68.73 In relation to this, see the recent work by Rudy Le Menthéour, La manufacture de maladies: la dissidence hygiénique de Jean-Jacques Rousseau (Paris, 2012).74 See Anne C. Vila, Enlightenment and Pathology (Baltimore, MD, 1998).75 He speaks of a ‘particular passion’, defined in fact as a ‘passion of tears’; see Cureau de la Chambre, Les charactères des passions, 15.76 See Mark Jefferson, ‘What is Wrong With Sentimentality?’, Mind, 368 (1983, new series), 519–29; Robert C. Solomon, ‘In Defense of Sentimentality’, Philosophy and Literature, 14 (1990), 304–23; Robert C. Solomon, In Defense of Sentimentality: The Passionate Life (Oxford, 2004).77 Solomon, ‘In Defense of Sentimentality’, 304.78 Solomon, ‘In Defense of Sentimentality’, 305. Note the substantial similarity between the prejudice denounced by Solomon in the field of the philosophy of emotion and that denounced in the field of historiography by Rosenwein; see Rosenwein, ‘Worrying about Emotion in History’.79 Peter J. Stanlis, ‘Introduction’, in Lovejoy, The Great Chain of Being (New Brunswick, NJ, 2009), viii–ix.80 Solomon, In Defense of Sentimentality, 305.81 Alfred de Musset, Sur la naissance du Comte de Paris, in Œuvres de Alfred de Musset, edited by Paul de Musset (Paris, 1867), 113.