Are there emotions tangled with the reporting of the Past? How do they find manifestation, in verbal or nonverbal narration? Which of those emotions move us closer to people recounting their personal past life or unfolding their or other’s collective past? And which are the emotions we feel in the presence of the material ruins of past times, especially when they look abandoned and are subject to decay? Which are the emotions awaken by the cultural heritage and in how far the defence, retrieval and reuse of monuments is aiming at their emotional fruition?
This ambiguity of the emotional relationship to the past as a whole is already detectable in the Homeric epic writings: the telling of past events awakens pleasure, admiration, antagonism as well as fear and distress, as the origin of current disgraces can be traced in the past. Epic narration is centred on the emotions it can awaken in the listeners by stories set in a very early past, bound to near events right in the mind of the listener or reader. To look forward to past events means to occasionally feel nostalgia, sometimes leads to cultivate the dream of re-forming or get over it; but not less often we look at the past to reject it, we feel ashamed, we even try to hide or change it. The range of emotions in the accounts of the past is very extensive and originates from cultural backgrounds, from material circumstances and from the purposes we look into the past for.
For this next issue of Archives of Emotions (AdE) we are seeking contributions about all epochs, starting from antiquity, from all narrations and from all artistic and cultural products.
Proposals in a language other than Italian (English, French, Spanish, German) are appreciated and encouraged.
Permanent submission
Expected release: The next Issue
For instructions about submitting a proposal, please click here.