The article considers how Joanna Baillie’s concept of “sympathetick curiosity” informs contemporary discussions about emotion regulation. By focusing on Baillie’s De Monfort (1798) and Orra (1812), the article argues that regulatory flexibility is a learned skill that can be improved by actively engaging sympathetic curiosity. Baillie insisted that her plays had pedagogical value and that having audiences watch them would help them learn how to avoid the destructive nature of the passions. Working with Bonanno and Burton’s (2013) model of regulatory flexibility, the article demonstrates the importance not just of inherent differences in emotion regulation but also of learning opportunities individuals engage to develop it. In particular, the article presents a model of how people learn through narrative simulation, drawing on the work of Romantic writers and current critics as well as cognitive psychologists and neuropsychologists. Consideration is then given to how watching protagonists’ manifestations of and responses to an unfolding passion helps audiences learn to develop their regulatory flexibility.
“Some Powerful Rankling Passion”: An Interdisciplinary Exploration of Emotion Regulation Strategies in Joanna Baillie’s Passion Plays
M. Soledad Caballero is professor of English at Allegheny College. Her work in British Romanticism focuses on travel writing, empire, and gender studies; she is also a poet. With psychologist Aimee Knupsky, she has published in Romantic Praxis; additional coauthored essays are forthcoming in Critical Collaboration Communities: Academic Writing Partnerships, Groups, and Retreats. Caballero and Knupsky have been awarded the Expanding Collaboration Grant Interdisciplinary Team Teaching across the Arts/Humanities and Sciences, funded by the Mellon Foundation, as well as a National Endowment for the Humanities Connections planning grant focused on the application of ethical interdisciplinarity to humanities programs and student experiences at Allegheny College.
Aimee C. Knupsky is associate professor of psychology at Allegheny College. Her work in cognitive psychology focuses on how we learn and communicate in academic settings. With literary scholar M. Soledad Caballero, she explores interdisciplinary connections among emotion, affect, and literature through grant-funded research, teaching, and scholarship, including the Expanding Collaboration Grant Interdisciplinary Team Teaching across the Arts/Humanities and Sciences, funded by the Mellon Foundation. They were awarded a National Endowment for the Humanities Connections planning grant focused on the application of ethical interdisciplinarity to humanities programs and student experiences at Allegheny College. With Caballero, she has published in Romantic Praxis and has work forthcoming in Critical Collaboration Communities: Academic Writing Partnerships, Groups, and Retreats.
M. Soledad Caballero, Aimee Knupsky; “Some Powerful Rankling Passion”: An Interdisciplinary Exploration of Emotion Regulation Strategies in Joanna Baillie’s Passion Plays. Poetics Today 1 September 2019; 40 (3): 475–498. doi: https://doi.org/10.1215/03335372-7558094
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