Violence and Emotions in Early Modern Europe examines the purposes for which specific forms of violence and particular emotional states functioned, how they operated in relation to each other, or indeed how one provoked, sustained or diminished the other.

These twelve original essays demonstrate the complexities of violence and emotions and the myriad possibilities of their inter-relationships. They emphasize the great efforts that were made by early modern societies to control modes of violence and emotional regimes to achieve positive as well as negative effects, such as...