2020_11_26_FYL_noticia_usunariz_emociones

"Melancholy was conceived as a disease in the medieval and modern centuries," says Jesús M. Usunáriz, Full Professor of Modern History at the University of Navarra. The professor intervened, together with other historians, archivists and linguists, in the online workshop "Emotions", organized by the Chair of language and Basque Culture of the University of Navarra. 

Usunáriz referred to melancholy as what we now understand as depression. "We talked about the melancholy that women felt after childbirth, the melancholy associated with witch hunts or love," she added.

The goal of this workshop was to make known the emotions, the way of living and expressing them, in order to approach the values, feelings and behaviors of the Navarrese people of the XVI and XIX centuries.  

Mari Mar Larraza, director of the Chair of language and Basque Culture and professor of Contemporary History, presented a discussion paper on verbal violence: "In itself it is not an emotion, but it does refer to a way of acting that generates negative emotions and feelings such as anger, hatred, contempt or revenge". In her speech, she dealt with the old and new insults of three women from rural Navarre "who had in verbal offense one of the ways to build their own political identity".

Félix Segura, section head of the file Real y General de Navarra, explained that it is in the archives where emotions are found, "manifested in the documents both internally, with the recording of episodes such as violence, love, illness or devotion, and externally, awakening in the viewer a series of emotions". 

In this sense, Teresa Alzugaray, archivist and paleographer at the file Diocesan of Pamplona, pointed out that in the documents of this file "are reflected the feelings and emotions of the people who made up the society from the XV century to the beginning of the XX century, about matrimonial issues, fights, constructions, natural disasters". One of the most important sections of the file Diocesan of Navarre is the one dedicated to the processes. It contains nearly 80,500 documents that give clues as to how the citizens of Navarre lived and felt in the modern age.

Anger, fear or love

For her part, Cristina Tabernero, professor of language Spanish School of Philosophy and Letters of the academic center, addressed the verbal manifestation of anger: "The manuals of good manners of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries reflected the importance given to these uses. However, it would be linked only to more elitist and polite uses, and not so much to the daily reality of other more popular groups, who did not understand this courtesy subject and gave free rein to these feelings in the form of outbursts or intensifying metaphors".

Pablo Orduna, Associate Professor of History at the International University of La Rioja, referred to fear, "which reveals very clearly the reality of the feelings that exist within a society". And finally, Concha Martínez Pasamar, professor of Spanish language at the University of Navarra, spoke of the emotions surrounding love, through the direct voices of those who wrote their letters, preserved in the Cathedral's Diocesan file . "The joint work of Philology Linguistics and History allows a deeper approach to the social functions of language through history," she explained.