Mentalitástörténet

Mentalitástörténet, or the history of mentalities, is a subfield of history that focuses on the collective attitudes, beliefs, values, and ways of thinking of past societies. It emerged as a significant approach within the Annales School of history in France, particularly from the 1930s onwards, though its roots can be traced to earlier intellectual currents. Rather than concentrating on political events or the actions of prominent figures, mentalitástörténet seeks to understand the underlying, often unarticulated, frameworks through which people in the past perceived and interacted with their world.

This historical subdiscipline explores how ordinary people, not just elites, experienced and understood their lives. It examines concepts such as perceptions of time, death, love, religion, childhood, and social order. Methodologically, mentalitástörténet draws from various disciplines, including anthropology, sociology, psychology, and literary studies. Historians in this field analyze a wide range of sources, including literature, art, legal documents, personal diaries, folklore, and visual materials, looking for recurring patterns and underlying assumptions that reveal the emotional and intellectual landscape of a historical period. The aim is to reconstruct a deeper, often subconscious, understanding of past cultures and to show how these collective mental frameworks shaped historical processes and individual actions.