Green Eyes

Some researchers feel compelled to study disreputable neighbourhoods or people. Peter Toohey, a professor of classics at the University of Calgary, is apparently attracted to disreputable emotions. He has already explored what the ancients called melancholy and we see as depression (Melancholy, Love and Time: Boundaries of the Self in Ancient Literature), before moving on to Boredom: A Lively History.

While Melancholy explored the evolution of self-consciousness in the ancient world, Boredom had a more ambitious aim: to rehabilitate boredom’s reputation by revealing its positive effects on our lives.

And now, in Jealousy, Toohey has turned his attention to this feeling in the same optimistic spirit. He asserts that it is “a potent means for the assertion of individual rights and the encouragement of cooperation and equitable treatment.”

It would certainly be cheering to learn that jealousy can...