Between the 12th and the 14th centuries, medieval poets write the complex affective concepts of sloth and sorrow into ever so fluid literary formulations. Their artistic grasp at emotion is self-conscious and multiple, as it engages with a most unstable anthropologic manifestation which closely resonates with the functioning modes of poetic expression. The scope of my dissertation is to uncover the intimate operations of this double expressive movement, where literature grapples with the fundamental mobility of emotion through active exploration of its own figural possibilities.