The Honor And Loneliness Of Chateaubriand

Chateaubriand’s texts and practices are full of emotional elements,especially the two emotional states of honor and loneliness.In different life stages,Chateaubriand’s understanding and feeling of honor and loneliness are constantly changing,which are revealed through the media such as text,language,sense and action,or directly embedded in the text,or manifested in the behavior of daily life.At the same time,the changes in emotional experience and the complexity of emotional expression indicate that as an individual experience,honor and loneliness reflect and are shaped by a series of larger social issues:etiquette,norms,gender,age,religion,philosophy.The research method of the history of emotions can make comprehensive use of the theoretical achievements of current emotion research to further analyze the multiple carriers of emotion,so as to discover Chateaubriand’s phased experience and rich expression of honor and loneliness.At the same time,the social culture and political forces in France are also constantly shaping personal emotional experience and expression.By exploring the cultivation and guidance of emotional polity to personal emotions,the deep causes of Chateaubriand’s emotional changes will be presented.Chateaubriand’s understanding of honor was initially based on the influence of blood and family environment,which formed the sense of knightly honor including the feelings of self-esteem and vanity.This demonstrates the lasting influence of an aristocratic code of honor centered on rank differences and standards of etiquette.After the revolution,the aristocratic identity maintained by social hierarchy was broken,and the new democratic honor code provided a more tolerant and liberal environment in which men were encouraged to gain prestige and pursue profits.Chateaubriand broke the shackles of the old aristocratic concept,and his pursuit of honor evolved into the advocator of the French national belief.In addition,his cognition of loneliness has undergone a process from passive acceptance to active seeking.The sense of loneliness initially stems from a lonely childhood,when loneliness was filled with insecurity and attachment to others.A visit to America in his youth opened his deep understanding of loneliness,which revealed to him the richness of danger,pain,freedom and joy in the world of nature and imagination,and made him feel shocked and healed.In the end,Chateaubriand builds an emotional refuge from loneliness,gaining strength and inspiration.The study of emotion includes multiple perspectives such as private sphere and public sphere,inner and outer sphere,action and discourse into the analysis category,so that we can draw Chateaubriand’s emotional schema comprehensively in the broad social scene,and create a more rich and three-dimensional character image.