Historia de la alegría : Un viaje al interior de nuestra intimidad

Leaving aside mass passions, Alain Corbin sketches, in an accessible style rich in references and details, the history of the most elusive emotion: "the intimate joy experienced in the depths of one's being." As he did in "History of Silence," in this brief, captivating, and well-documented essay, Corbin traces the experiences that have triggered joy in people from antiquity to the twentieth century, according to their circumstances and stages of life. Drawing on numerous philosophical, literary, epistolary, theological, and legal references, this great historian of sensibilities shows how the search for joy has been a driving force for personal and societal transformation in the West throughout the centuries.