Reflections on Paolo Santangelo’s Research into Chinese Emotional Culture

In Sentimental Education in Chinese History: An Interdisciplinary Textual Research on Ming and Qing Sources, Paolo Santangelo seeks to reinterpret emotional cultures within Chinese history through a taxonomic study of affective vocabulary in classical texts from the mid-Ming to mid-Qing periods, along with comparative analysis with corresponding Western terminology. Combining textual analysis with methodologies from linguistics and psychology, Santangelo categorizes Chinese emotional culture into five fundamental types. Using glossaries and textual analysis, he establishes a typological framework, offering a valuable interdisciplinary research approach for future studies on emotion.