Kerstin Maria Pahl

An Open Access edition of this book is available on the Liverpool University Press website and the OAPEN library. Early modern life writing extended far beyond the written word. People were painted, drawn, and sculpted; their biographies were illustrated, their pictures inscribed, and their signatures considered akin to self-portraits. The Visual Worlds of Life Writing explores representations of individuals in the visual and literary culture of early Enlightenment England. At its centre are portraits and biographies, the most popular artistic and literary genres, which navigated concepts of character, identity, likeness, and difference, while increasingly staking a claim to aesthetic excellence. As potent cultural products on the art and print market, they were also key instruments of social formation at a time of nation-building, indispensable for the making of political culture and the public sphere. Surveying the splendid diversity of portrayals - from painting and sculpture to frontispiece portraits and book illustrations, as well as micrographic and calligraphic portraits - The Visual Worlds of Life Writing reconstructs how individuality and collectivity were fashioned across different media. A thorough reassessment of visual culture’s interplay with biographical practice, the book offers an analysis of the rhetorics of portraiture and life writing, a historical account of their sister arts tradition, and an inquiry into the social function of profling people.

Historicizing both emotions and politics, this open access book argues that the historical work of emotion is most clearly understood in terms of the dynamics of institutionalization. This is shown in twelve case studies that focus on decisive moments in European and US history from 1800 until today. Each case study clarifies how emotions were central to people’s political engagement and its effects. The sources range from parliamentary buildings and social movements, to images and speeches of presidents, from fascist cemeteries to the International Criminal Court. Both the timeframe and the geographical focus have been chosen to highlight the increasingly participatory character of nineteenth- and twentieth-century politics, which is inconceivable without the work of emotions.

Historicizing both emotions and politics, this open access book argues that the historical work of emotion is most clearly understood in terms of the dynamics of institutionalization. This is shown in twelve case studies that focus on decisive moments in European and US history from 1800 until today. Each case study clarifies how emotions were central to people’s political engagement and its effects. The sources range from parliamentary buildings and social movements, to images and speeches of presidents, from fascist cemeteries to the International Criminal Court. Both the timeframe and the geographical focus have been chosen to highlight the increasingly participatory character of nineteenth- and twentieth-century politics, which is inconceivable without the work of emotions.