Affect and Literature
- Editor: Houen, Alex
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...
Affect and Literature
- Editor: Houen, Alex
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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...
About
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.
Contents
- 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 Rabate;
- 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.
Awards and reviews
The Midwest Book Review
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
