The aim of this article is to present the history of emotions as a thriving and innovative field of historical inquiry. Although the history of emotions has gained momentum only relatively recently, it has been considered as a “star” of contemporary historiography, mainly in its capacity to reconcile poststructuralist approaches with individual agencies of real people. The article focuses on the development of the field, starting with its “father”, the Annales’s historian Lucien Febvre, going through the “emotionology” of American social historians Peter and Carol Stearns to finish with the works of Barbara Rosenwein and William Reddy whose contribution challenged historians’ thinking about emotions in history most considerably. On the other hand, the article emphasizes the interdisciplinary implications of the history of emotions and seeks to explain the motives for “paradigmatic changes” advanced by the history of emotions in broadly shared beliefs in universal and natural character of emotions.
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