Research Catalog

Wounded feelings litigating emotions in Quebec, 1870-1950

Title
Wounded feelings [electronic resource] : litigating emotions in Quebec, 1870-1950 / Eric H. Reiter.
Author
Reiter, Eric H., 1964-
Publication
Toronto ; Buffalo ; London : Published for the Osgoode Society for Canadian Legal History by University of Toronto Press, [2019]

Available Online

  • Available from home with a valid library card
  • Available onsite at NYPL

Details

Additional Authors
Osgoode Society for Canadian Legal History.
Description
1 online resource (xiii, 482 pages) : illustrations.
Summary
"Wounded Feelings is the first legal history of emotions in Canada. Through detailed histories of how people litigated emotional injuries like dishonour, humiliation, grief, and betrayal before the Quebec civil courts from 1870 to 1950, it explores the confrontation between people's lived experience of emotion and the legal categories and terminology of lawyers, judges, and courts. Drawing on archival case files, supplemented by newspapers and contemporary legal writings, it examines how individuals narrated their claims of injured feelings, and how the courts assessed those claims, using legal rules, social norms, and the judges' own feelings to validate certain emotional injuries and reject others. The cases reveal both contemporary views of emotion as well as the family, gender, class, linguistic, and racial dynamics that shaped those understandings and their adjudication. Examples include a family's grief over their infant son's death due to a physician's prescription error, a wealthy woman's mortification at being harassed by a conductor aboard a train, and the indignation of two Black men at being denied seats at a Montreal cinema. The book also traces an important legal change in how moral injury was conceptualized in Quebec civil law over the period, as it came to be linked to the developing idea of personality rights. By 1950, the subjective richness of stories of wounded feelings was increasingly put into the language of violated rights, a development with implications for both social understandings of emotion and how individuals presented their emotional injuries in court."--
Series Statement
Osgoode Society for Canadian Legal History series
Uniform Title
  • Wounded feelings (Online)
  • Osgoode Society for Canadian Legal History series.
Alternative Title
Wounded feelings (Online)
Subject
  • Personal injuries > Québec (Province) > History > 19th century
  • Liability for emotional distress > Québec (Province) > History > 19th century
  • Personal injuries > Québec (Province) > History > 20th century
  • Liability for emotional distress > Québec (Province) > History > 20th century
Bibliography (note)
  • Includes bibliographical references (pages 431-467) and index.
Access (note)
  • Access restricted to authorized users.
Contents
Feelings and the law in nineteenth-century Quebec -- Shame, mortification, disgrace, dishonour -- Family dishonour -- Bodily intrusion -- Betrayal -- Grief and mourning -- Indignation, anger, fear -- Conclusion: From wounded feelings to violated rights.
LCCN
2018456304
OCLC
ssj0002248926
Author
Reiter, Eric H., 1964-
Title
Wounded feelings [electronic resource] : litigating emotions in Quebec, 1870-1950 / Eric H. Reiter.
Imprint
Toronto ; Buffalo ; London : Published for the Osgoode Society for Canadian Legal History by University of Toronto Press, [2019]
Series
Osgoode Society for Canadian Legal History series
Osgoode Society for Canadian Legal History series.
Bibliography
Includes bibliographical references (pages 431-467) and index.
Access
Access restricted to authorized users.
Connect to:
Available from home with a valid library card
Available onsite at NYPL
Added Author
Osgoode Society for Canadian Legal History.
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