Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Dedication
- 1 Introduction: Strong experiences and what causes them
- 2 The study of strong experiences
- 3 Epistemic feelings and knowledge
- 4 Arousal, emotion and strong experiences
- 5 The psychological background
- 6 How literature triggers strong experiences
- 7 Conclusions
- Bibliography
- Index
6 - How literature triggers strong experiences
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 09 December 2022
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Dedication
- 1 Introduction: Strong experiences and what causes them
- 2 The study of strong experiences
- 3 Epistemic feelings and knowledge
- 4 Arousal, emotion and strong experiences
- 5 The psychological background
- 6 How literature triggers strong experiences
- 7 Conclusions
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
In this chapter, I show that the ordinary characteristics of literary texts have the capacity to set in motion the various triggers for strong experience. These same characteristics which peak in strong experiences also give literary texts their continuous epistemic characteristics and produce feelings of mild arousal.
Literature and Strong Experiences
Literature is relevant for the study of strong experiences for two reasons. First, people can have strong experiences triggered by literary texts. Emily Dickinson defined poetry by its ability to cause a thrill:
If I read a book [and] it makes my whole body so cold no fire can warm me I know that is poetry. If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry. These are the only way I know it. (Johnson and Ward 1958: L342a/1870)
Second, literary texts can represent characters as having strong experiences. Here for example is a fictionalized account by Kate Chopin of a character responding to music with thrills:
The very first chords which Mademoiselle Reisz struck upon the piano sent a keen tremor down Mrs. Pontellier's spinal column. It was not the first time she had heard an artist at the piano. Perhaps it was the first time she was ready, perhaps the first time her being was tempered to take an impress of the abiding truth.
She waited for the material pictures which she thought would gather and blaze before her imagination. She waited in vain. She saw no pictures of solitude, of hope, of longing, or of despair. But the very passions themselves were aroused within her soul, swaying it, lashing it, as the waves daily beat upon her splendid body. She trembled, she was choking, and the tears blinded her. Chopin (1899: ch.9).
Sometimes an author will describe a character's experience, and this may also be a kind of indirect report if the character's experience is based on a real experience known to the author. Because all reports of strong experience are unverifiable, the distinction between real and fictional reports is not as important as it might be.
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- Information
- A Theory of Thrills, Sublime and Epiphany in Literature , pp. 141 - 178Publisher: Anthem PressPrint publication year: 2022