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" Cultures of shame in Britain, c.1650-1800 "
Zhao, Han
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Latin Dissertation
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| Record Number
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895895
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TLets810139
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| Main Entry
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University of Warwick
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| Title & Author
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Cultures of shame in Britain, c.1650-1800\ Zhao, Han
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| College
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University of Warwick
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| Date
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2016
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| Degree
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Thesis (Ph.D.)
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2016
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| Abstract
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This thesis examines the cultures of shame in the latter half of the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Britain. It offers a critical response to two oversimplified accounts of shame in the current non-historical literature: the traditional view, which identifies shame as a socially-constructed and morally-problematic emotion, and the recent revisionist view, which claims that shame is virtuous and entirely autonomous. By identifying shame as an emotion, a sense of honour, a moral sanction, a commodity, and a disciplinary weapon, and scrutinising it through the lens of religion, politeness, print, and law, this thesis explores how contemporaries experienced, interpreted, represented, and utilised shame for spiritual, moral, commercial, and judicial purposes over time. It demonstrates that shame, within different historical contexts, could be social as well as personal, morally virtuous as well as morally irrelevant or even bad. Shame was an essential religious emotion. Religious shame was a self-imposed and morally-virtuous emotion; it was desired and embraced by early modern Protestants, who saw it as a sign of piety and a means to come nearer to God. While religious shame was an emotion primarily concerning personal salvation, shame in a secular context was a socially-constructed concept dealing with a person’s public honour. Early modern people regarded shame as something of great moral and disciplinary value, which functioned as an inward restraint keeping people away from sin, and a form of community and judicial punishments. However, the moral and disciplinary characteristics of shame were not immutable; in the eighteenth century, shame faced the danger of being abused and reduced to a superficial and detrimental concept.
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HN Social history and conditions. Social problems. Social reform
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University of Warwick
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