What Literature Teaches Us about Emotion (Studies in Emotion and Social Interaction)
Cambridge University Press
Edition: Illustrated, 3/21/2011
EAN 9781107002883, ISBN10: 1107002885
Hardcover, 352 pages, 22.9 x 15.2 x 2.4 cm
Language: English
Literature provides us with otherwise unavailable insights into the ways emotions are produced, experienced and enacted in human social life. It is particularly valuable because it deepens our comprehension of the mutual relations between emotional response and ethical judgment. These are the central claims of Hogan's study, which carefully examines a range of highly esteemed literary works in the context of current neurobiological, psychological, sociological and other empirical research. In this work, he explains the value of literary study for a cognitive science of emotion and outlines the emotional organization of the human mind. He explores the emotions of romantic love, grief, mirth, guilt, shame, jealousy, attachment, compassion and pity - in each case drawing on one work by Shakespeare and one or more works by writers from different historical periods or different cultural backgrounds, such as the eleventh-century Chinese poet Li Ch'ing-Chao and the contemporary Nigerian playwright Wole Soyinka.
Introduction
studying literature, studying emotion
1. Fictions and feelings
on the place of literature in the study of emotion
2. What emotions are
3. Romantic love
Sappho, Li Ch'ing-Chao, and Romeo and Juliet
4. Grief
Kobayashi Issa and Hamlet
5. Mirth
from Chinese jokes to A Comedy of Errors
6. Guilt, shame, jealousy
The Strong Breed, Macbeth, Kagekiyo, and Othello
7. From attachment to ethical feeling
Rabindranath Tagore and Measure for Measure
8. Compassion and pity
The Tempest and Une Tempête
Afterword
studying literature shaping emotion
Madame Bovary and the sublime.