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Reading faces: how did late medieval Europeans interpret emotions in faces?

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Abstract

There were a number of confident guides to the interpretation of facial expressions, complexions, and gestures in late medieval England. Medico-scientific literature posited facial complexion as a sure sign of the humoral (and hence emotional) tendencies of the whole person. Ecclesiastical law courts accepted facial expressions and gestures as decisive indicators of motives of speech and action, and of consent, or otherwise, to marriage. Emotional behaviors connected with the face, such as weeping, were taken to signify true remorse and repentance. Yet alongside these discourses, hints appear that other late medieval writers found the unitary correspondence between face and emotion worryingly unstable. Facial expressions might be assumed; tears might arise from less worthy motives than remorse; behavior might be consciously enacted rather than spontaneously arising from interior emotion. This paper investigates some of the problematics of reading faces raised in late medieval English texts and contemporary visual media.

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Notes

  1. This essay has been very slightly abridged by the editors from the text sent to them by Philippa Maddern in 2013 following her presentation at the ARC-sponsored Faces of Emotion conference, held at the University of Melbourne in December, 2012. It is published here with the permission of Philippa’s executors.

  2. Huang et al. conclude that Matsumoto and Ekman’s Japanese and Caucasian Facial Expressions of Emotion (JACFEE) are valid in Chinese culture, but that pictures relating to fear and surprise might need modification.

  3. See summaries in von Scheve (2012, 1–14, esp. 6–8) and Hess and Philippot (2007, esp. 1–6).

  4. But see Hess (2001, 401). Hess notes that there have been shown to be individual differences in the muscular patterns of smiling.

  5. See, for example, the gesture of St. John in the Crucifixion attributed to van der Weyden’s workshop in the GemäldeGalerie, Berlin.

  6. Cited in Harriss (1988, 251).

  7. See also, for example, cases in CP.F.257 (1476–1477) and CP.F.308 (1499–1500).

  8. See also CP.F.308 (1499–1500), a case where different witnesses disagreed as to whether the bride showed a happy or tearful face.

  9. For the executions of Earl Rivers, Richard Grey, and Sir Thomas Vaughan, see Pronay and Cox (1986, 161). The whole continuation seems to have been completed no later than early May 1486 (Pronay and Cox, 1986, 57–60).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Western Australia, Perth, Australia

    Philippa Maddern

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  1. Philippa Maddern
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† Deceased.

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Maddern, P. Reading faces: how did late medieval Europeans interpret emotions in faces?. Postmedieval 8, 12–34 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41280-016-0038-7

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