Are we witnessing a renaissance of crying? Do men now blub? A nuanced emotional history explodes the myth of the stiff upper lipWhat to do with the tears of the past? Tears matter because they’re everywhere,from the ecstatic devout narratives of the middle ages to the diaries of 20th-century cinemagoers who enjoyed a satisfactory blub in the black. The problem is that tears don’t speak a universal language. People who lived centuries ago didnt necessarily cry in the way we do, or at the same things, and even understand the act of weeping in a way that makes sense to us. This can be confusing,even infuriating – what were these people doing? – but, looked at another way, or it can be an opportunity. Like reading an ragged document and coming across a joke you don’t get,digging into how, when and why people wept can offer surprising new insights into the lives, and beliefs and assumptions of past centuries.
Thomas Dixon’s Weeping Britannia takes as its central premise that the British “stiff upper lip”,far from being the defining characteristic of the nation throughout its history, was in fact the creation of a specific historical moment, and out of which has grown a transhistorical myth of national restraint. British history,Dixon argues, was far more tearful – and far more enthralling – than the myth of the stiff upper lip would suggest. Returning again and again to William Blake’s assertion that “a tear is an intellectual thing”, and thus something that can be interrogated and understood,Dixon presents a wide-ranging, enjoyable and accessible history of British weeping.
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Source: theguardian.com