What Literature Teaches Us about Emotion

This book explores emotion in a range of literary works, in the context of current neurobiological, psychological, sociological and other empirical research.

Patrick Colm Hogan (Author)

9781107477742, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 18 December 2014

352 pages, 6 b/w illus.
23 x 15.3 x 2.2 cm, 0.55 kg

"As good books should, this one provokes a sense of engagement and stimulates dialogue with its reader, and the question it poses in the title is a profound one.... Patrick Hogan’s erudite and lively book leaves such questions open for others to pursue, while itself bringing into fruitful dialogue disparate fields of analysis not often brought together.... This is a refreshingly ambitious book in the sheer magnitude of the task of talking about emotions in literature by using findings from science and history, and seeing literature as a valid and invaluable source for psychological exploration. Hogan lucidly cuts through complexities to important issues. Even if more answers to the question ‘What does literature teach us about emotions?’ may lie beyond its parameters, this book does a valuable service in asking it."
--R. S. White, The University of Western Australia, Parergon - Journal of the Australian and New Zealand Association for Medieval and Early Modern Studies

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.

Subject Areas: Neurosciences [PSAN], Psychology: emotions [JMQ], Social & cultural anthropology, ethnography [JHMC], Philosophy [HP], Shakespeare studies & criticism [DSGS], Literary studies: general [DSB]