"La passion des larmes". L'analisi del pianto nei traités des passions seicenteschi (da Coeffeteau a Cureau de La Chambre)

The article analyzes the evolution of the discourse concerning human tears in a literary genre characteristic of the seventeenth century: the traites des passions. Inevitably suspended between a physical-biological explanation and a moral explanation, weeping became the privileged expression of a new conception of the passions, which aimed to understand the influence that the emotional dynamic has on moral conduct. Gradually freeing itself from the religious dimension (Coeffeteau, Senault), the study of the tears was firstly bring back to a strictly physiological explanation (Descartes), to finally be placed at the center of a true philosophical inquiry from Cureau de la Chambre in his Characteres des Passions.