Affect and Literature

Explores a wide range of affects, affect theory, and literature to consolidate a fresh understanding of literary affect.

Alex Houen (Edited by)

9781108424516, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 6 February 2020

470 pages
23.5 x 16 x 3 cm, 0.78 kg

'A seminal body of meticulous, informative, and deftly presented scholarship, Affect and Literature is an extraordinary and unreservedly recommended addition to community and academic library Literary Criticism & Theory collections and supplemental curriculum reading lists.' Jim Cox, The Midwest Book Review

This book considers how 'affect', the experience of feeling or emotion, has developed as a critical concept within literary studies in different periods and through a range of approaches. Stretching from the classical to the contemporary, the first section of the book, 'Origins', considers the importance of particular areas of philosophy, theory, and criticism that have been important for conceptualizing affect and its relation to literature. Includes ancient Greek and Roman philosophy, eighteenth-century aesthetics, Marxist theory, psychoanalysis, queer theory, and postcolonial theory. The chapters of the second section, 'Developments', correspond to those of the previous section and build on their insights through readings of particular texts. The final 'Applications' section is focused on contemporary and future lines of enquiry, and revolves around a particular set of concerns: media and communications, capitalism, and an environment of affective relations that extend to ecology, social crisis, and war.

Introduction: affect and literature Alex Houen
Part I. Origins: 1. Poetic fear-related affects and society in Greco-Roman antiquity Dana LaCourse Munteanu
2. Secondary affect in Lessing, Mendelssohn, and Nicolai Stefan Uhlig
3. Affect and life in Spinoza, Nietzsche, and Bergson John Protevi
4. Feelings under the microscope: new critical affect Helen Thaventhiran
5. 'We manufacture fun: capital and the production of affect Ross Wilson
6. Jacques Lacan's evanescent affects Jean-Michel Rabaté
7. The durability of affect and the ageing of gay male queer theory Geoff Gilbert
8. Affect, meaning, becoming, and power: Massumi, Spinoza, Deleuze, and neuroscience Anthony Uhlmann
9. Translating postcolonial affect Sneja Gunew
10. Making sorrow sweet: emotion and empathy in the experience of fiction Alison Denham
Part II. Developments: 11. Feeling feelings in early modern England Benedict S. Robinson
12. Laughable poetry Matthew Bevis
13. Modernism, formal innovation, and affect in some contemporary Irish novels Derek Attridge
14. The antihumanist tone Christopher Nealon
15. Bette Davis's eyes and minoritarian survival: camp, melodrama, and spectatorship Amber Musser
16. Affective form Ankhi Mukherjee
17. Subaltern affects Stephen Morton
Part III. Applications: 18. Affect and environment in contemporary ecopoetics Margaret Ronda
19. Contemporary crisis fictions: twenty-first century disaffection Emily Horton
20. Shiny happy imperialism: an affective exploration of 'ways of life' in the war on terror Amira Jarmakani
21. The digital's amodal affect Andrew Murphie
22. Digital special affects: on exhilaration and the STUN in CGI blockbuster films Eric Jenkins
23. Cartesian affect Claire Colebrook.

Subject Areas: Media, information & communication industries [KNT], Media studies [JFD], Western philosophy: Ancient, to c 500 [HPCA], Communication studies [GTC], Literary reference works [DSR], Literary studies: post-colonial literature [DSBH5], Literary studies: general [DSB], Literary theory [DSA]