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Explores a wide range of affects, affect theory, and literature to consolidate a fresh understanding of literary affect.
List of 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 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.
About the author
Alex Houen is author of Terrorism and Modern Literature (2002), and Powers of Possibility: Experimental American Writing since the 1960s (2012). His edited publications include: a special issue on 'Affects, Text, and Performativity' of Textual Practice (March/April 2011); and (with Jan-Melissa Schramm), Sacrifice and Modern War Literature: Battle of Waterloo to the War on Terror (2018). He also co-edits the international journal of poetry, Blackbox Manifold.
Summary
This volume explores a wide range of affects, affect theory, and literature to consolidate a fresh understanding of the importance of affect for literary writing. The book will be of importance to students and academics in literary studies, philosophy, media, and communication studies.
