As a tribute to Karl Heinz Göller’s interest in early modern English fiction, this paper takes issue with Anna Wierzbicka’s claim of a “shift from the Shakespearean wrath to modern anger” which “both reflects, and constitutes an aspect of, the democratisation of society and the passing of the feudal order”. Investigating the use of wrath and anger in the two versions of Sidney’s Arcadia, it confirms an earlier insight that the genre of prose fiction, for instance, prefers anger to wrath already in Elizabethan times. Moreover, it is shown that the rise of anger is an ongoing process in the period. Together with the decline of wrath, it is related not so much to “democratisation” as to individualization and civilization. These are prerequisites of democratization, but certainly not identical with it.
 

As a tribute to Karl Heinz Göller’s interest in early modern English fiction, this paper takes issue with Anna Wierzbicka’s claim of a “shift from the Shakespearean wrath to modern anger” which “both reflects, and constitutes an aspect of, the democratisation of society and the passing of the feudal order”. Investigating the use of wrath and anger in the two versions of Sidney’s Arcadia, it confirms an earlier insight that the genre of prose fiction, for instance, prefers anger to wrath already in Elizabethan times. Moreover, it is shown that the rise of anger is an ongoing process in the period. Together with the decline of wrath, it is related not so much to “democratisation” as to individualization and civilization. These are prerequisites of democratization, but certainly not identical with it.