Emotions - Syllabus

Howard Sklar, PhD

Department of English

University of Helsinki

Fiction and the Emotions

A few clarifications:

Unless indicated otherwise, all readings are available in my pigeonholes in the departments of English and Comparative Literature. You may copy the articles contained in these pigeonholes, but please take only one article at a time, and be sure to return the master copy (with the pages in order) to the pigeonholes so that the articles will be available for others!

All required readings must be read before the date of the session in which they are listed. You’ll find them in the green (as in “Go!”) folders in my pigeonholes.

All “supplementary readings” are optional…but highly recommended! They also may be used as materials for the papers. I will list these extra readings on the website at the “Supplementary Readings” link. You’ll find these articles in the blue folders.

Paper assignments are explained on the “Course Assignments” page of my website as well as on a handout that will be distributed during the first class session.

“Journal” assignments are also explained on the “Course Assignments” page. I have listed the general topics for these journals below.

11.9.09

Session 1 – Introduction: Fiction and the Emotions

Reading (distributed in class)

Don DeLillo: from Falling Man

Journal: Emotions in DeLillo’s Falling Man

PART I: PHILOSOPHICAL VIEWS ON FICTION AND EMOTIONS

18.9.09

Session 2 – The Paradox of Fiction 1: Why Do We Fear Fictional Situations?

Required Readings

Jerrold Levinson: “Emotion in Response to Art: A Survey of the Terrain”

(OPTIONAL — reviews material discussed in Session 1)

Kendall Walton: “Fearing Fictions” (available online here)

Journal – Emotional Experiences with Fiction

25.9.09

Session 3 – The Paradox of Fiction 2: Real or Imagined Emotions

Required Reading

Susan L. Feagin: “Imagining Emotions and Appreciating Fiction”

Journal – The Implications of Caring for Fictional Characters

2.10.09

Session 4 – Thought Theory T

Required Reading

Robert J. Yanal: “Thought Theory T” (from Paradoxes of Emotion and Fiction)

Journal – What is an “Unconsummated” Emotion?

9.10.09

Session 5 – Experiencing Emotions

Marie-Laure Ryan: “Emotional Immersion” (from Narrative as Virtual Reality)

NO JOURNAL!

HUOM! NO CLASS ON 16.9.09!

PART II: NARRATIVE THEORY AND EMOTIONS

23.10.09 - **Paper #1 due**

Session 6 – Empathy and Fiction

Required Reading

Suzanne Keen: “A Theory of Narrative Empathy,” in Narrative 14:3 (available

online here)

NO JOURNAL

HUOM! NO CLASS ON 30.10.09! (due to Reading Week/Kontaktiopetukseton viikko)

6.11.09

Session 7 – How Narratives Create Sympathy for Fictional Characters

Required Readings

Toni Cade Bambara: “The Hammer Man”

Howard Sklar: “Narrative Structuring of Sympathetic Response: Theoretical and

Empirical Approaches to Toni Cade Bambara’s “The Hammer Man,” Poetics

Today 30:3, pages 561-563 (section 1) and pages 568-579 (section 3).

Available online here.

Journal – Personal Reading: Sympathy

13.11.09

Session 8 – Challenging Sympathy

Required Readings

James Joyce: “Eveline” (Dubliners)

Tanja Vesala-Varttala: “Everything Changes: Opposition to Disrespect” (from

Sympathy and Joyce’s Dubliners: Ethical Probing of Reading, Narrative,

and Textuality

Journal – Sympathy for Fictional Characters: Actual Caring or Self-Indulgence?

20.11.09

Session 9 – Empirical Approaches to the Study of Reader Emotions

Assigned Readings

Howard Sklar: “Narrative Structuring of Sympathetic Response: Theoretical and

Empirical Approaches to Toni Cade Bambara’s “The Hammer Man,” Poetics

Today 30:3, pages 579-601 (section 4). Available online here.

Gerard Steen and Dick Schram, “The empirical study of literature:

Psychology, sociology, and other disciplines” (from Dick Schram

and Gerard Steen, eds. The Psychology and Sociology of

Literature)

Journal – Impressions on Possible Uses of Empirical Study of Reader Response

27.11.09 – **Paper #2 due**

Session 10 – Summing Up: A Wild, Stimulating, Free-Ranging, EMOTIONAL Discussion

(There are no new readings for this session, which mainly will be a discussion of earlier readings and discussions, and a chance to raise other questions that have been left untreated during the course.)