TY - JOUR
T1 - Anxiety, Affect, and the Performance of Feelings in Radical Pietism
T2 - Towards a Topography of Religious Feelings in Denmark-Norway in the Early Enlightenment
AU - Engelhardt, Juliane
PY - 2019/12
Y1 - 2019/12
N2 - The article investigates the emotional practices among radical Pietists during their conversion from "false" to "true" Christianity. It argues that melancholy and anxiety were considered necessary and edifying feelings during this process. Through bodily practices, the convert demonstrated that he or she was in a state of affect: a medium for the works of God. Among the wider population in Denmark-Norway, however, the distinction between true and false Christians, employed by both moderate and radical Pietists, caused despair. This article discusses the influence of Pietism on modern emotional categories, and demonstrates how Pietists both relied on old understandings of emotions and created new ones.
AB - The article investigates the emotional practices among radical Pietists during their conversion from "false" to "true" Christianity. It argues that melancholy and anxiety were considered necessary and edifying feelings during this process. Through bodily practices, the convert demonstrated that he or she was in a state of affect: a medium for the works of God. Among the wider population in Denmark-Norway, however, the distinction between true and false Christians, employed by both moderate and radical Pietists, caused despair. This article discusses the influence of Pietism on modern emotional categories, and demonstrates how Pietists both relied on old understandings of emotions and created new ones.
U2 - https://muse.jhu.edu/article/715144
DO - https://muse.jhu.edu/article/715144
M3 - Journal article
SN - 0013-2586
VL - Vol. 52
SP - 245
EP - 261
JO - Eighteenth Century Studies
JF - Eighteenth Century Studies
IS - Number 2
ER -