Writing War in Britain and France, 1370-1854 ― A History of Emotions

Writing War in Britain and France, 1370-1854: A History of Emotions brings together leading scholars in medieval, early modern, eighteenth-century, and Romantic studies. The assembled essays trace continuities and changes in the emotional register of war, as it has been mediated by the written record over six centuries.

Through its wide selection of sites of utterance, genres of writing and contexts of publication and reception, Writing War in Britain and France, 1370-1854 analyses the emotional history of war in relation to both the changing nature of conflicts and the changing creative modes in which they have been arrayed and experienced. Each chapter explores how different forms of writing defines war – whether as political violence, civilian suffering, or a theatre of heroism or barbarism – giving war shape and meaning, often retrospectively. The volume is especially interested in how the written production of war as emotional experience occurs within a wider historical range of cultural and social practices.

Writing War in Britain and France, 1370-1854: A History of Emotions will be of interest to students of the history of emotions, the history of pre-modern war and war literature.

Stephanie Downes is an honorary fellow at the University of Melbourne. She has published on late medieval literary and textual cultures and their modern reception, and on various social and cultural aspects of emotions history, including Emotions and War: Medieval to Romantic Literature (Palgrave, 2015) with Andrew Lynch and Katrina O’Loughlin, and, with Sally Holloway and Sarah Randles, Feeling Things: Emotions and Objects through History (OUP, 2018).

Andrew Lynch is Professor in English and Cultural Studies at The University of Western Australia, and Director of the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for the History of Emotions. He writes mainly on medieval and modern medievalist literature. He is co-editor of the journal Emotions: History, Culture, Society (Brill) and the forthcoming Bloomsbury Cultural History of Emotions.

Katrina O’Loughlin holds an Australian Research Council Discovery Early Career Research Award (DECRA) based at the University of Western Australia. She has published on various aspects of Enlightenment and Romantic literature including Women, Writing and Travel in the Eighteenth Century (Cambridge University Press, 2018) and, with colleagues, two volumes on different aspects of the history of emotions.