‘Every body took notice of the scene of the drawing room’: Performing Emotions at the Early Georgian Court, 1714‐60

Abstract

This article interrogates the court's reputation as ‘the residence of dullness’ to reveal a multivalent emotional space with a practised grammar of emotional concealment and display. The performance of emotions by the royal family and courtiers in the State Apartments acted as a powerful draw to court events, as the display of joy or cheer acquired national significance. Under such scrutiny the king and his courtiers routinely limited displays of grief or pain to more restricted spaces such as the closet. The article analyses the court as a unique micro‐community in order to recreate the emotional character of London's palaces.

Revisiting space and emotion: New ways to study buildings and feelings

“…While architectural historians have often led the way in considering how a designer or architect envisioned emotional responses within a space (e.g., Godson & James‐Chakraborty, 2019; Hammond, 2022), these expectations can, and often are, transgressed, conflicted, and actively reacted to (e.g., Boddice, 2018; Ebrahimi & Maitland, 2022; Fama, 2022; Whyte, 2018). Pushing the field of architectural history forward, Sara Honarmand Ebrahimi's special forum on ‘Exploring Architecture and Emotions through Space and Place’ employs a diversity of emotional concepts to investigate the interplay between management of space and management of emotions (Ebrahimi, 2022).…”