Angelika C. Messner

In literarischen Werken des 17. Jahrhundert figurieren Gefuhle und Leidenschaften - im Gegensatz zum herrschenden Verhaltenskodex - als naturlicher und notwendiger Ausdruck menschlichen Seins. Die Forschung spricht hier vom "Kult der Emotionen" und von einer "romantischen" Bewegung, die fur die Emanzipation durch Gefuhle und fur Subjektivismus steht. Auch wenn sich diese Vergleiche mit der europaischen Aufklarung und Romantik anbieten, verraten sie nichts uber die Emotionspraktiken dieser Zeit in China. Die Studie erschliesst und analysiert bis dato unzugangliches Quellenmaterial und erarbeitet ein methodologisches Instrumentarium, um die unterschiedlichen Wissensraume - literarische, philosophische und medizinische - fur eine Geschichte der Gefuhle in China lesbar zu machen.

At the beginning of the twenty-first century, the vocabulary of civility and civilization is very much at the forefront of political debate. Most of these debates proceed as if the meaning of these words were self-evident. This is where Civilizing Emotions intervenes, tracing the history of the concepts of civility and civilization and thus adding a level of self-reflexivity to the present debates. Unlike previous histories, Civilizing Emotions takes a global perspective, highlighting the roles of civility and civilization in the creation of a new and hierarchized global order in the era of high imperialism and its entanglements with the developments in a number of well-chosen European and Asian countries. Emotions were at the core of the practices linked to the creation of a new global order in the nineteenth century. Civilizing Emotions explores why and how emotions were an asset in civilizing peoples and societies - their control and management, but also their creation and their ascription to different societies and social groups. The study is a contribution to the history of emotions, to global history, and to the history of concepts, three rapidly developing and innovative research areas which are here being brought together for the first time.