Introduction

Abstract

In recent decades, literary criticism, art and film criticism have been dominated by formalist, psychoanalytical and cultural studies approaches; but since the 1980s, many disciplines — from economics to political science, philosophy, psychology, history, law, biology and the neurosciences — have taken an affective turn which guided my perspective in this book. The great variety of affective phenomena (emotions, sentiments, moods and feelings) has been the object of many definitions, investigations, hypotheses and experimental tests in questionnaires and brain-imaging. Topics which have always been common in novels, dramas and films — ambition, love, jealousy, regret, remorse, resentment, rage, trust, nostalgia, disgust and fear — have come to figure in many fields of knowledge; some analytical philosophers and psychologists have studied the emotions elicited by the arts. The research in affective phenomena implies the exploration of the mind and, drawing from the cognitive sciences, has refined the hard cognitivist approaches of the 1970s and has rejected the separation established by Emmanuel Kant between reason (Vernunft) and the emotions (Seele). This division has been dominant in Western thought and reinforced by most Romantic authors and thinkers, with some important exceptions. Traces of the dualist conception are visible in the rejection of reason and the logos that has been fashionable in literary theory since the late 1960s.

[…] but when the New Age is at leisure to Pronounce; all will be set right: & those Grand Works of the more ancient & consciously & professedly Inspired Men, will hold their proper rank, & the Daughters of Memory shall become the Daughters of Inspiration.

William Blake, Milton. A Poem in Two Books