Emotions shape human choices in every age. But what happens when one comes face to face with someone or something one does not understand? When late medieval travellers narrate their first encounter with a foreign city, the words used often reveal curiosity, fear, fascination, and sometimes rejection. Centuries later, a twentieth-century diarist reacts in strikingly similar ways when confronted with political, cultural, or social “others”. What changes? What remains? This book analyses how historical actors experienced and described encounters with the unknown, and answers questions such as what can be considered as “foreignness”, when strangeness turns into alienation, and finally, how emotional reactions shaped judgments and actions. Drawing on many unpublished, rarely analysed egodocuments (diaries, memoirs, letters, and autobiographical notes), the volume traces emotional responses to otherness from the late Middle Ages to the twentieth century.

Contributors are: Hadrian Ciechanowski, Michael Green, Mark von der Höh, David Knibbe, Jakub Basista, Nataliia Voloshkova, Stanisław Roszak, Arvydas Pacevičius, Miroslav Vašik, Veronika Girininkaite, Grzegorz Skrukwa, Aleskandra Tobiasz, Katrin Sippel, Małgorzata Strzelecka, Adriana Kovacheva, Anna Kowalcze-Pawlik, Sigurður Gylfi Magnússon, and Davið Olafsson.