The ambition of the present volume is to explore the (dis)ordering impact of emotions and gender ideologies, or how emotions and gender transform the strengthening or weakening of social structures. This book should definitely be seen as the twin volume of Ordering Emotions in Europe, 1100–1800 also edited by Susan Broomhall (2015). In her introductory paper Broomhall asserts that “states of emotions” have structuring purposes as well as the power to affect secure social balances: “We thus explore how gender and emotions operated to effect real or perceived forms of order and disorder” (1). While states of disarray are in some of the cases studies a consequence of concrete historical events involving much instability, such as revolts, crusades, or wars, in other cases they are themselves emotions, such as anxiety caused by personal changes (such as travel, for instance). In other words, disorder can itself be a matter of feelings of alarm. Such a wide-ranging notion of “(dis)order” can be perplexing. The angle of study adopted here is either social or cultural and it very rarely delves into the political scene, despite the claim that emotional work has political repercussions. A direct correlation between emotional and political phenomena is problematic to ascertain, but the volume luckily illuminates additional aspects, such as the prominent role of moral and ethical views, as well as the importance of temporalities in the management of emotional states.

The first part, “Structuring Emotions of War and Peace,” opens with Andrew Lynch’s study on courage and fear in a series of Anglo-Saxon and Early Middle English literary texts. Courage, surprisingly, is pictured with ambivalence, in particular when the social benevolence of promise keeping is vacillating. The second article, by Megan Cassidy-Welch, analyzes six surviving letters written by Jacques de Vitry during the Fifth Crusade. The author considers these letters as multilayered and demonstrates how feelings of tiredness and sadness are shared despite the propagandist tone expected. The third article, by Tracy Adams, works on affective diplomacy or “emotional manipulation” in a comparison between Anne de France’s text to her daughter and other early sixteenth-century powerful women. Susan Broomhall’s contribution is devoted to Catherine de’ Medici’s letters about her two granddaughters who lived in Spain. Emotions are used here as tools in a combination with gift exchange and other ways to express and emphasize her concern and close ties with the Spanish household.

The second part is devoted to “Chronicling Feeling of Disaster and Ruin.” The first article, by Matthew S. Champion, examines the feeling of time at Louvain’s Carthusian house between 1486 and 1525. The chronicles of the Chartreuse de Louvain reveals much about the anxiety, even the suicidal feelings, of its composers. What is remarkable here is the notion of plural temporalities and the play with time and memory. The next contribution, by Alicia Marchant, is an illuminating article on decay and ruins. The question raised is how and when ruins were invented as a site of yearning and nostalgia, and why suspicions about the antiquary’s virility were interpreted as an illness or an obsession with a long-gone past. The next article, by Erika Kuijpers, examines convent chronicles composed by nuns who suffered much violence during the Dutch Revolt of 1566–1635. It uncovers new styles of emotional codes mirrored in texts of hybrid features. Charles Zika analyzes the transforming visual representations of the Witch of Endor and how it reveals new masculine fears and the evolving vision of witchcraft in the seventeenth century.

The last part, “Children, Familial and Religious Communities,” focuses on the more private sphere. Annemarieke Willemsen studies regulations of school in the fourteenth to seventeenth centuries. The three codes studied here tell us about life in the schools and the processes of educational and emotional training of the children, as well as the building of emotional ties with their teachers. Claire Walker treats the way nuns were challenged by early modern English cloister regulations and how the nuns’ letters, diaries, and histories reveal much about their emotional negotiation with the cloisters’ strict ideology. Claudia Jarzebowski researched travel with children in the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and offers a comparative analysis of two case studies of separation and travel. It shows how memories, regrets, hopes, and emotional turmoil were negotiated and managed in those itinerant families. Jacqueline Van Gent closes the volume with an article on the religious revival in Herrnhut in 1727 to suggest the impact of intense religious feelings of young girls on their congregation.

In conclusion, this is an engaging volume that adds new angles of study, such as the study of temporalities, and the moral and ethical aspects and the eventual political consequences of emotional work against gender ideologies. It offers a wide array of inspiring articles that add a valuable contribution to the fast-growing literature on emotions.