Cheerfulness

<p><b>A timely story of a forgotten emotion</b> <p/><i>Cheerfulness: A Literary and Cultural History</i> tells a new story about the cultural imagination of the West wherein cheerfulness -- a momentary uptick in emotional energy a temporary lightening of spirit -- functions as a crucial theme in literary philosophical and artistic creations from early modern to contemporary times. In dazzling interpretations of Shakespeare and Montaigne Hume Austen and Emerson Dickens Nietzsche and Louis Armstrong Hampton explores the philosophical construal of cheerfulness -- as a theme in Protestant theology a focus of medical writing a topic in Enlightenment psychology and a category of modern aesthetics. In a conclusion on cheerfulness in pandemic days Hampton stresses the importance of lightness of mind under the pressure of catastrophe. A history of the emotional life of European and American cultures a breathtaking exploration of the intersections of culture literature and psychology <i>Cheerfulness </i>challenges the dominant narrative of Western aesthetics as a story of melancholy mourning tragedy and trauma. Hampton captures the many appearances of this fleeting and powerfully transformative emotion whose historical and literary trajectory has never before been systematically traced.</p>