Main description:

The only book to take a really broad look at literature and emotion from a variety of perspectives including neuroscience
Section on theory introduces the more complex areas of affect theory and cognitive science so people can understand throughout the book
Looks at a wide variety of literature but also features commonly studied writers such as Shakespeare, Chaucer, Austen and Woolf

Contents:

Introduction. Literary Feelings: Understanding Emotions Part 1 Theoretical Perspectives 1. Affective Neuroscience: The Symbiosis of Scientific and Literary Knowledge 2. Affect Theory 3. Cognitive Linguistics: A Perspective on Emotion in Literature 4. Cognitive Science: Literary Emotions from Appraisal to Embodiment 5. Embodiment: Embodied Simulation and Emotional Engagement with Literary Characters 6. Empirical Approaches to Studying Emotion in Literature: The Case of Gender 7. Evolution: How Evolved Emotions Work in Literary Meaning 8. The History of Emotions and Literature 9. Philosophy, Literature, and Emotion Part 2 Emotions of Literature 10. Aesthetic Emotions 11. Paradoxes of Literary Emotion: Simulation and The Zhao Orphan 12. Sympathy and Empathy 13. Tragedy and Comedy: Emotional Tears and Trust in King Lear and Cymbeline Part 3 Literature and Emotion in the World 14. Colonialism and Postcolonialism 15. Disability, "Enslavement," and Slavery: Affective Historicism and Fletcher and Masssinger's A Very Woman 16. Ecology and Emotion: Feeling Narrative Environments 17. Morals: The Ethical Gangster 18. Gender, Emotion, Literature: "No Woman's Heart" in Shakespeare's Twelfth Night 19. Race and Ethnicity 20. Sexuality 21. Trauma and Its Future: Re-Visiting Aesthetic Form Debates Part 4 Elements of Literary Structure and Experience 22. Authors: Cognitive Patterns and Individual Creativity 23. Character and Emotion in Fiction 24. Language, Style, and Texture 25. Narrative and Plot: Unreliable Feelings and the Risks of Surprise 26. Readers 27. Social Reception 28. Stories: Particular Causes and Universal Genres Part 5 Modes of Literature 29. Drama: Feeling Out Loud in Shakespearean Apostrophe and the History of Emotions 30. Film: The Affective Specificity of Audiovisual Media 31. Graphic Fiction: BIPOC Teen Comics 32. Lyric 33. Prose Fiction Part 6 Literary Examples 34. Geoffrey Chaucer 35. William Shakespeare: Anxieties About Trust in The Tempest 36. Jane Austen and the Emotion of Love 37. Virginia Woolf's Development of a Sociology of Emotion in the Composition of The Years (1937)

38. Helon Habila: Structural Helplessness and the Quest for Hope in Oil on Water

39. Viet Thanh Nguyen: Navigating Anger and Empathy in The Sympathizer