Exploring Text and Emotions

Exploring Text and Emotions investigates the functions, values and effects of emotions in literature and the arts, fostering the affective turn in textual theory and analysis.

Fifteen essays on various art works analyse how modern fiction, drama, theatre, poetry and film, as well as Greek tragedy, succeed in both expressing and suggesting a vast and nuanced array of emotions while provoking affective responses in readers and spectators. The volume focuses on the exemplary way in which literature and the arts act upon our minds and have a strong impact on our understanding of aesthetic, political and moral values, challenging, shaping and transforming culture. The volume also intends to show how seminal writers and works have anticipated contemporary theories of emotions and can contribute to their growth.

Linking formal, aesthetic and cultural-studies approaches, and combining the latest developments in the affective sciences with the close reading of texts, the volume puts forward a new direction for the study of literature, arts, media and culture.