<p/><br></br><p><b> About the Book </b></p></br></br>Exploring representations of happiness and other positive emotions in early modern Europe, this volume brings together interdisciplinary approaches informed by affect theory, history of emotions research, and the contemporary cognitive sciences to highlight the meanings and valuations of good feelings in the Renaissance.<p/><br></br><p><b> Book Synopsis </b></p></br></br>What did it mean to be happy in early modern Europe? <i>Positive emotions in early modern literature and culture</i> includes essays that reframe historical understandings of emotional life in the Renaissance, focusing on under-studied feelings such as mirth, solidarity, and tranquillity. Methodologically diverse and interdisciplinary, these essays draw from the history of emotions, affect theory and the contemporary social and cognitive sciences to reveal rich and sustained cultural attention in the early modern period to these positive feelings. The book also highlights culturally distinct negotiations of the problematic binary between what constitutes positive and negative emotions. A comprehensive introduction and afterword open multiple paths for research into the histories of good feeling and their significances for understanding present constructions of happiness and wellbeing.<p/><br></br><p><b> From the Back Cover </b></p></br></br>Exploring literary culture as a record of how early modern subjects imagined and experienced positive emotions - like happiness, cheer, tranquillity, contentedness, trust, satisfaction, or solidarity - this volume brings together interdisciplinary work on emotion and affect to reread the history of good feelings. Taken together, these wide-ranging essays demonstrate that the European Renaissance was a time of intense reflection and evaluation of happiness and its related positive feelings in cultural realms as diverse as the court, the public theatre, the church, and in various areas of intellectual debate. While melancholy has been regarded as the defining cultural emotion of the early modern, this volume highlights literary negotiations of positive emotions and at the same time reveals the ways in which contemporary distinctions between positive and negative emotions and affects have falsely framed these cultural products. The positive is never simply good or desirable, but instead reflects cultural structures and systems that are both profoundly necessary for social life and at the same time flawed by inequalities and exclusions. Moreover, the essays reveal in their methodological diversity how the fertile intersections between studies in the history of emotions, modern affect theory, and the contemporary cognitive sciences enrich critical accounts of how positive emotions were cultivated and experienced. Tracing the ways these textual representations of positive emotions illuminate emotional life in early modern Europe, the volume offers exciting new paths for research into what it means for human individuals and communities to be happy and well, both in the past and the present.<p/><br></br><p><b> About the Author </b></p></br></br>Cora Fox is Associate Professor of English at Arizona State University Bradley J. Irish is Associate Professor of English at Arizona State University Cassie M. Miura is Assistant Teaching Professor in the Division of Culture, Arts, and Communication at University of Washington, Tacoma