Emotional Sincerity, Social Authenticity, and Performance in England, 1660-1760

英国的情感真诚、社会真实性和表现，1660-1760 年

• 批准号: 2750186
• 金额: --
• 依托单位: University of Warwick
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Studentship
• 财政年份: 2022
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2022 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=studentship-2750186
• 关键词: Emotional; Sincerity; Social; Authenticity; Performance

This study investigates the social history of emotional sincerity and social authenticity in Englandbetween 1660 and 1760. It explores how performance, artifice, and imposture were used to obfuscatethe true nature of feelings and social identity, or were perceived to do so. The project considers howfeelings and identities were performed in everyday interpersonal encounters like marriage, friendship,and credit transactions. The central questions are why emotional sincerity and social authenticitybecame heightened cultural concerns in this period, and how they manifested differently depending onthe social status or gender of the individuals involved. This project is timely, resonating with present-daysociocultural concerns about authenticity and sincerity.Studies of Renaissance and Enlightenment individualism have considered sincerity, demonstrating itscentrality to early modern culture and thought (Martin, 2007; Wahrman, 2004), but gender and statushave been neglected as categories of analysis. Employing a 'bottom-up' approach, I make use of courtrecords and cheap print to assess the lower orders' ideas of emotional sincerity and social authenticity,looking beyond metropolitan confines into the provincial sphere. Studies that consider gender and rankhave exemplified how these concerns played out in everyday life. Yet these are confined to narrowpurviews, like late eighteenth-century genteel women's relationship to politeness and 'natural' feelings(Ylivouri, 2018), or the lower sort's involvement in literal imposture cases (Hug, 2009). I prioritise theinextricable importance of emotion, gender, and rank in everyday dynamics like marriage and friendshipfor a holistic view of contemporary ideas about sincerity and authenticity. For example, though genteelperspectives expressed anxiety over emotional insincerity and social inauthenticity, ballads depicteddeceit as gleefully subversive for the lower sorts. One eighteenth-century ballad, The Father Deceived,celebrates a 'crafty' farmer's marriage to a rich girl through flagrant deception-yet also idealises thecouple's 'sincere' love. Such accounts suggest that the lower orders valued sincerity, but perhaps indifferent ways or for different reasons than the elite. Employing Rosenwein's methodology of 'emotionalcommunities', I will explore how emotional sincerity was conceptualised, and how and why expectationsand behaviours shifted according to identity and social environment.

这项研究考察了1660年至1760年间英国人的情感真诚和社会真实性的社会历史。它探讨了表演、诡计和伪装是如何被用来混淆情感和社会身份的真实性质，或者是如何被认为这样做的。该项目研究了情感和身份如何在婚姻、友谊和信用交易等日常人际交往中表现出来。核心问题是为什么情感真诚和社会真实性在这一时期成为高度关注的文化问题，以及它们如何根据所涉个人的社会地位或性别而不同地表现出来。文艺复兴和启蒙个人主义的研究考虑了诚意，展示了它对早期现代文化和思想的中心地位(Martin，2007；Wahrman，2004)，但性别和地位被忽略作为分析的范畴。我采用“自下而上”的方法，利用法庭记录和廉价印刷品来评估下层阶级对情感真诚度和社会真实性的看法，将目光投向大都市以外的地方。考虑性别和排名的研究已经举例说明了这些担忧是如何在日常生活中发挥作用的。然而，这些局限于狭隘的观点，比如18世纪末上流社会女性对礼貌和自然感觉的关系(Ylivouri，2018)，或者较低级别的女性参与字面上的冒充(Hug，2009)。我把情感、性别和在婚姻和友谊等日常动态中的排名放在首位，以便从整体上看待当代关于真诚和真实的观念。例如，尽管文雅的观点表达了对情感上的不真诚和社会上的不真实的焦虑，但民谣将欺骗描绘成对下层阶级兴高采烈的颠覆。18世纪的一首民谣《父亲受骗了》通过公然的欺骗来庆祝一个狡猾的农夫和一个富家子弟的婚姻，同时也理想化了这对情侣真诚的爱情。这样的说法表明，较低级别的人看重诚意，但可能与精英阶层不同，或者出于不同的原因。运用罗森韦恩的“情感社区”方法论，我将探索情感真诚是如何被概念化的，以及期望和行为如何以及为什么会随着身份和社会环境的变化而改变。