This collection, tentatively titled Emotions, Law, and Performance, invites cutting-edge work on the intersections between performance theory, legal history, and the history of emotions, prompting us to ask: What does it mean to bring these three studies together? How can sensitivity to emotions help us to better understand the legal experience? Can we read legal narratives as emotional performances?

Applying the history of emotions to the field of legal history is not a new endeavor. William Ian Miller, Stephen D. White, Daniel Lord Smail and Paul Hyams are all pioneers in the field, who early on showed the importance of considering emotional motivations and cultural scripts to understand how litigants used legal systems. More recently, works by John Hudson, Elizabeth Papp Kamali,  Philippa Maddern, Kimberley-Joy Knight, and Merridee Bailey have dug deep into the emotional vocabulary of the English legal system as well as the performance of emotion in the medieval courtroom. This wave of scholarship has challenged a tendency to approach law and emotions as separate spheres, showing instead how emotions play an important role within legal reasoning, doctrine, behavior, and change over time. We need to build on their fine work.

Particularly for the late medieval and early modern periods, recent work on law and emotions has emphasized their intersection within narrative and performance. Work by Katie Barclay, Amy Milka, and David Lemmings, for example, has shown that emotions could be essential components of trial narratives. More broadly, writing about and embodying emotions could be a key way to frame what the law and its actions mean. In recent work on law as performance, Julie Stone Peters has shown how spectacle and theatricality could be deployed to enforce the power of law. These approaches are promising for legal history but as of yet are under-examined within the early and high Middle Ages.

In this volume, we hope to fill this gap through studies that bring together elements of emotions, law, and performance across England from roughly 500 to 1500. We would like to see this study encompass different jurisdictions  (royal, ecclesiastical, conscience, urban, local, feudal courts) and bodies of law (canon law, civil law, common law), incorporating not just law in practice but also law in literature.

Possible topics for investigation:

• A whole range of emotions to think about: contempt, disgust, empathy, fear, grief, hatred, humiliation, humor, indifference, indignation, jealousy, joy, love, malice, remorse, repulsion, shame, sorrow, terror
• The juxtaposition of emotion & reason: how did this play out in law and jurisprudence? What did canonists mean when they referred to the “reasonable man”?
• How did ideas about emotion influence perceptions of gender in the medieval courtroom? How was gender performed through emotions in courtrooms?
• Were there emotional regimes at play in the courts of medieval Europe?
• How did petitioners employ an emotional vocabulary to mobilize the judges’ emotions?
• Emotional environments: which emotions were acceptable at law? Which were not?
• How were emotional norms shaped by the law, and vice versa?
• How did the emotional outcomes of a legal decision influence the makers of that decision?
• How were emotions employed as legal strategy?
• How was the law employed to control emotions? Did social control of emotion eliminate or intensify emotion?
• What role did scribes play in the mediation / narration of emotion in the legal record?
• How did jurisdiction impact the use of the language of emotion? Did different courts have different emotional lexicons?
• Was law used to evoke emotions (perhaps patriotism, sense of security, honor)? How did these emotions contribute to efforts to build order or legitimize state authority?
• How has emotion been used to rationalize the creation of new law?
• How did a perpetrator’s emotional act influence a jury’s verdict? Did a defendant need to perform his emotions in court?
• What role did emotions play in stirring up disputes? Or in resolving them?
• How did emotion function as evidence in trials?
• If the goal of law was to restore the peace after it had been broken, what role did emotion play in that process?
• Do legal emotions have a ritualistic aspect?
• How do emotion and memory intersect in witness depositions?

If you would like to become a contributor to this volume, please reach out to one of its co-editors, Sara Butler (butler.960@osu.edu) or Meghan Woolley (meghanwoolley@gmail.com).

Schedule: We are hoping for commitments and abstracts by 1 Oct. 2024.  We will be hosting a virtual symposium with contributors the first week of August, 2025. Deadline for full first drafts of chapters is 30 Sept. 2025.