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Patrick Colm Hogan
Professor, Department of English, University of Connecticut
Third Speaker, Main Forum Session
Abstract
Literary Feeling: Cognitive Schemas and Sanskrit Narrative
Theory
The Sanskrit theory of aesthetic emotion is strikingly similar to recent
theories of "basic emotions" developed by Ekman, Johnson-Laird, and Oatley.
The most obvious similarity is in the list of emotions that each theory
takes to be fundamental. However, this list is highly problematic,
in terms of completeness and even in terms of conceptual consistency.
Fortunately, other aspects of the two theories suggest ways in which a
more fully adequate understanding of aesthetic emotions may be developed,
an understanding that incorporates what is surprising and valuable in this
list of supposedly basic human feelings. Specifically, in Oatley's
view, emotion is, roughly, a function of situation-specific probability
assessments relative to broad--and, in effect, narrative--schemas.
Oatley analyzes these narrative schemas in Aristotelian terms. However,
the Sanskrit theory seems more appropriate, for it anatomizes narrative
in terms of precisely the sort of discontinuous, subjective assessments
discussed by Oatley. Moreover, it anatomizes these assessments in
some detail, and does so in relation to broad, emotion-related categories,
with potentially valuable consequences for the theory of genre. In
re-considering emotion and cognition through a narrative theory of this
sort, we may begin to isolate, not a simple list, but more complex structures
of literary emotions, not only acknowledging, but to some extent systematizing
the different types and functions of literary (and perhaps even non-literary)
feeling.
Patrick Colm Hogan
University of Connecticut
Patrick Colm Hogan's home page
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