IMC 2024: Sessions

The Society for the Study of Medieval Emotions (SSME) has organised a series of in-person sessions for the Leeds International Medieval Congress 2024. The history of emotions has an important part to play in discussions of medieval crisis and vice versa, not least because any consideration of emotional change over time – which has emerged as a rich vein of research in recent years – must navigate, and understand the impact of, the major crises of the medieval world. The fourth and final session in this series of panels investigates how emotions were utilised in medieval sources to justify right or wrong action and behaviour. Ryan Barnett begins the session with an exploration of Jean de Waurin’s fifteenth century chronicle, in which negative emotions are used to alleviate guilt and justify Waurin’s actions in the Hundred Years War. Ana del Campo’s paper questions the validity of royal laughter in the face of death, found in late medieval Iberian sources, and how laughter was meant to convey particular behavioural models. The final speaker, Hailey O’Harrow, concludes the session by arguing that the presence of certain emotions in First Crusade sources were clearly used to legitimise the act of going on crusade.