Positive Emotions in Early Modern Literature and Culture

Cora Fox is Associate Professor of English at Arizona State UniversityBradley J. Irish is Associate Professor of English at Arizona State UniversityCassie M. Miura is Assistant Teaching Professor in the Division of Culture, Arts, and Communication at University of Washington, Tacoma

• Introduction – Cora Fox, Bradley J. Irish, and Cassie M. MiuraPart I: Rewriting discourses of pleasure1 Happy Hamlet – Richard Strier2 Therapeutic laughter in Robert Burton’s The Anatomy of Melancholy – Cassie M. Miura 3 The pleasure of the text: reading and happiness in Rabelais and Montaigne – Ian Frederick Moulton4 Pleasure and the 'rustic life' – Ullrich LangerPart II: Imagining happy communities5 The theology of cheer, Erasmus to Shakespeare – Timothy Hampton6 ‘My crown is called content’: positive, negative, and political affects in Shakespeare’s first tetralogy – Paul Joseph Zajac7 Solidarity as ritual in the late Elizabethan court: faction, emotion, and the Essex Circle – Bradley J. Irish8 Merriness, affect, and community in Shakespeare’s Merry Wives of Windsor – Cora FoxPart III: Forms, attachment, and ambivalence9 Happy objects and earthly pleasure in Thomas Traherne’s devotional poetry – Leila Watkins 10 Trust and disgust: the precariousness of positive emotions in Webster’s The Duchess of Malfi –Lalita Pandit Hogan 11 ‘My heart is satisfied’: revenge, justice, and satisfaction in The Spanish Tragedy – Eonjoo Park 12 All’s Well That Ends Well? Happiness, ambivalence, and story genre – Patrick Colm HoganAfterword – Michael SchoenfeldtIndex