Au miroir des bienheureux. Les émotions positives et leurs représentations en Grèce archaïque

We understand this more and more, the emotions are part of our cognitive functions: memories, judgments, decision-making. It is true in our time, as it was in early Greece. Here we have a field of study that we should consider, if we are to comprehend what made Hesiod or Sappho’s contemporaries act and react as they did. This book intends to investigate those positive emotions, like pleasure, joy, or cheerfulness, and their representations. What ideas did the Greeks have on them? Which positive emotions did they embrace and when? What do the sources tell us about their way of expressing or hiding them? Among the causes of joy and pleasure, some are obvious, others are not because they depend on the Greek cultural and social context. In the meantime, the semantic field evolves. Then some highlighted conceptions on emotions have come to the surface and spread. In Homeric poetry, all the heroes feel they have to take action. Their emotions clearly prove it. A couple of centuries later, the soul is filled up with the promise of joy. From one century to another, ideas and conceptions have changed. That is what makes the emotions central to early Greek history.