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BODILY DIALOGUES.INDEXICALITYOF EMOTIONIN LITERARY EXPERIENCE

SIRKKA KNUUTTILA,UNIVERSITYOF HELSINKI

[T]hings swim in emotions the way water lilies consist not only of leavesand flowers and white and green but also of gently lying there.Robert Musil, The Man Without Qualities

All of the human life-world is permeated by emotions includingmomentary affect peaks elicited by inner or outer signs. This is why Robert

Musils dictum that things swim in emotions most eloquently expressesthe current conception of the constitutive role of emotions for ourembodied mind and its reasoning activities. During the last decade, withnew neuroimaging techniques, emotion has become a legitimate subject ofboth neurobiology and neuropsychology, thereby gaining new interestwithin the humanities. An enthusiastic neural mapping of functionallydistinctive brain regions has transposed emotion from its isolated site inthe obscure and illogical realm of the body into the centre of brainresearch. Emotion is thus no longer held as being an overly subjective,elusive phenomenon, placed at the opposite end from that of reason. Quitethe contrary: while the twentieth century neglected studies of emotion bothin neuroscience and in cognitive science, emotion has been shifted backinto pride of place in the scientific discourse which Charles Darwin,William James and Sigmund Freud reserved for it by the end of theprevious century (Damasio 2000, 38-39; 2001, 101-102). As a result, inRobert S. Solomons words, emotions have now become mainstream inphilosophy (Solomon 2004, 3).

Advances in neuroscience have evoked an eager multidisciplinarydebate concerning emotion on the questions as to the extent and manner in

which emotions contribute to human reasoning. In philosophy andpsychology, the relationship between emotion and cognition is one of the


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Bodily Dialogues. Indexicality of Emotion in Literary Experience

most exciting topics of inquiry, including the idea of emotion as anexperience, and the question of the future status of the concept of cognition

in theories of human consciousness (see e.g. Prinz 2004, 41-45). Also inliterary semiotics, the findings of current brain experimentation hassuggested a new concept of emphatic consciousness of a holisticbodymind (Merrell 2003, 6-17), in which emotion is understood as anintegral counterpart of rational thought taking place in the embodied mind(Varela et al. 1993, 148-149). In a similar vein as the neurophysiologistsAntonio Damasio and Joseph LeDoux, an increasing number of scholarsclaim that this development represents a paradigmatic change from theconcept of a dualistic Cartesian ego to that of a sensing posthuman

subjectivity.1

In literary interpretation, this claim draws attention toimportant questions concerning the hypothesis of nonverbal, affectiveactivity of the adaptive unconscious that cooperates with cognition in anemphatic reader. To develop the idea of how affectivity influencescognition in reading, my aim in this essay is to write about the functioningof a dialogical semiotic subject whose creative exchange with the artistictext is based on a revised outlook on affectivity of metaphor, whereupon abodily lived reading experience can be understood as a self-implicatingmethod enhancing and modifying the readers self-understanding (Miall

2006).It is from the newly conceived neurophysiological viewpoint oncognition and thought that I want to investigate the kind of mediating roleemotion plays in a sensing and feeling reader as an interpreting agent ofliterature. In cognitive poetics, the signifying role of emotion is still largelyneglected, while at the same time affectivity clamours for a detailedspecification as an essential dimension of literary metaphor. As David S.Miall states, whereas cognitive poetics tends to perpetuate an overlynarrow analytical interpretation of literary works mainly based oninformation processing, it ignores the affectivity of metaphor (Miall 2005,

134, 142-144; 2006, 158-160). To pave the way for emotion as anaknowledged factor in cognitive poetics, I will consider the signifyingfunction of emotion in literary semiotics by exploring its indexical, bodilyaspect as contributing to the contextualising of the text. The first importantpoint to take note of is that the concept of feeling continues to be centralfor the process of emotion since William Jamess times. Through feeling,emotion seems to act as a ubiquitous counterpart for cognitive activities bydirecting and regulating social interaction between self, other, and thehuman Umwelt. Therefore, the concept of feeling is to be examined

semiotically in the light of current neurophysiological theories of emotionfrom the perspective of Peircean pragmatic semiosis. That is why I firstwill offer a Damasian perspective to feeling as an intermediary in affect

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shifts during reading, in order to demonstrate its semiotically integral roleas a conducive factor in the readers evaluative ability.

Second, in order to lay the basis for semiotics of emotion in literaryreading, I will outline the neurophysiological process of emotion bydistinguishing its somatic and evaluative aspects according to Damasio andLeDoux. Provided that some personal mood always provides thebackground for ones emotional arousal, I will concentrate on studying thearousal of an affect phase elicited by an outer object. I will interpret it as abodily dialogue occurring in the adaptive unconscious as a gradualinteraction of two types of indexical signs. This enables me to shift to mythird topic: to examine the impact of literary passages and metaphoricalexpressions on the reader. I will review some insightful theories based on

current empirical studies of reading, which take seriously the currentneuropsychological knowledge of emotion by holding it as an influentialcomponent in the reading experience of personally touching literaryepisodes. And finally, I will explore the indexicality of those figurativeimages emerging from foregrounded textual material through the readersimplicit memory so as to underscore our empathic, emotionally wiredconnectedness that becomes visible through literary reading. Takentogether, my essay argues for the affectivity of multisensory metaphoricalexpressions in literature, and their contextualising power on the basis of

their inherent indexicality emerging in the reading experience.

Feeling as a Catalyst in Meaning Production

Emotion has been identified as a neuropsychological process ofsomatic changes in the organism, followed by a series of culturallyinfluential evaluations of these changes. Central for this process is thephenomenon of feeling, which is made communicable through a number ofthe culturally constructed semantic labels of emotion. The concept of

feeling thus has a mediating position in the process of emotion, while it hasbeen and still is a primary notion in psychological models of emotion overtime. Therefore, feeling deserves a short and focused historical frame ofreference so as to be taken as the key concept in literary semiotics.2 For mypresent aims, I find it sufficient enough to refer to John Deighs insightfularticle on Darwins theory of emotion. Deigh concludes that while ourunderstanding of emotion is rooted in two different programmes, namelythose of James and Freud, the challenge of any research concerningemotion today is to reconcile these programmes. On the one hand, in a

shrewd move long before its time, James defined emotions as feelings ofbodily changes. As Deigh states in Jamess words, the feelings of somaticalteration follow directly the perception of an exciting object (Deigh

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2004, 25).3 This view anticipated the development of current neuroscience,where the research on emotions is studied through the physiological

processes of feelings identified with emotions. On the other hand, long-term influences have persisted from Freuds supposition that emotionstransfer meaning and purpose to the feelings and behaviour manifestingthem. According to Deigh, this hypothesis is based on Freuds termunconscious emotion as an explanation for feelings, behaviour, andphysical illnesses otherwise inexplicable (Deigh 2004, 25). From these twodevelopments onwards, feeling has become a constant term used inphilosophical and psychological debates on emotion.

Seen in this dual historical frame which emphasises the reciprocal

cooperation of feeling and somatic signs, I understand affective changes ofthe body as indexical signs interpreted by the embodied mind in a tacitinteraction of these indices and human self-reflexive faculty. Myconception of the indexicality of feeling starts from the Peircean thesis thatperceptual images of the human Umwelt are strongly edited versions oftheir object, since the existential connection between text and the world isnot between word and reality, but between words and the readersconception of reality. The existential relation between subject, language,and world is mediated by the indexical aspect of language, that is, by the

inherent designative faculty of language, besides its explicitly deicticlinguistic elements. As Harri Veivo suggests, through its capacity forevoking mental icons as an endlless process of embodiment, languagemay even be considered [..] an extension of bodily functions (CP 3.419,4.531; Veivo 2001, 100, 104-107). From this perspective, cognitivepoetics poses some intriguing questions when trying to specify the terms ofliterary semiotics of emotion. How does a literary text evoke feelings ofemotion, and what is the role of indexicality of feelings in meaningproduction in literary reading? Furthermore, in what way does the feelingof somatic affects mediate the processing of perceptual and memorized

knowledge? And finally, how do emotions modify the readers conceptionof reality through metaphorical expressions?

I will address these questions by first outlining the neurobiologicalprocess of emotion formulated by Antonio Damasio, which is consistentwith the ideas of affective evaluation presented in Joseph LeDouxs twin-path theory of appraisal. Currently, neuroscientific experimentation hasdiscovered that emotions are mediated in specific regions in our brainsystem when compared to other kinds of information processing such asvital or cognitive functions.4 This evidence of a functional unit of an

emotional brain is suggestive for appreciating emotions as noteworthycomponents of rational inference in social survival. Strikingly, in theDamasian neurophysiological model, the position of feeling emerges

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from the ensemble of the cognitive faculties. As Damasio writes, emotionsare considered complementary parts to cognitive functions such asperception, feeling, memory, language, and reasoning (Moss & Damasio2001, 98, italics added; cf. Ben-zeev 2003, 150-151). Instead of defininghuman thought as rational and detached from the sensing body, since itoccurs in the brain, emotions are seen to cooperate with perception,cognition, and memory in a holistic organism as the most complexexpression of a homeostatic regulatory system serving evolutionarypurposes (Damasio 2001, 103-105). This is roughly the core of currentcriticism which tries to undermine the status of Cartesian dualism of bodyand mind residing in a modified form in our heritage of the philosophy ofthe Enlightenment.

Damasio defines feeling as distinctive from emotion by describing it asa private mental experience of an emotion. That is, whereas feeling is aninvisible, unobservable inner awareness of somatic changes, the termemotion designates the collection of responses, many of which are publiclyobservable (Damasio 2000, 42).5 Accordingly, emotional feelings can bedistinguished as separate from cognition, which currently denotes modes ofacquiring and processing knowledge and which includes perception,memory, language, and modification of the mental representations arisingfrom these activities by reasoning.6 Instead, emotion refers to a gradual

occurrence of bodily changes which are mediated through multipleresponse systems to some external or internal perceptual stimulus and theircultural interpretation which consists of different types of appraisalprocesses (Ochsner and Gross 2005, 242).7 In this configuration, emotionalfeeling refers to the tacit, inner awareness of the affective arousal of thebody. Both LeDoux and Jaak Panksepp similarly understand feeling as anembodied mode of knowing occurring in our adaptive unconscious, anddefine it as one important attribute of the human evolutionary birthright inthe management of our survival (LeDoux 1996; Panksepp 1998, 341).

What is more interesting still in the relation to literary reading, indeed, isthat feeling also signifies the later meta-level awareness of the initialfeelings of somatic changes, thus proving itself to be a self-reflexive,evaluative mental event as well (Damasio 1996, 143). In Mialls words,feeling denotes a subjective experience, without the overt signs andincentives to action of emotion, including [] feelings that have little orno cognitive content but which operate immediately as judgements,preferences, and the like (Miall 2006, 53). Hence, as a two-tiered factorthroughout the ongoing process of emotion, feeling may be held as anecessary pre-linguistic semiotic catalyst structuring the whole course ofthe emotional process from the level of Peircean firstness to that ofthirdness.8 As a registering complement to somatic sensationsbodily

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micropractices of affectivity, as George Downing puts itand theirrelation to the life-world, feeling propels acknowledging the experience of

bodily change into a cultural phenomenon called emotion (cf. Solomon2003, 15).

Semiotic Labeling of the Emotional Process

The most urgent task for the literary semiotics of emotion is to definethe sign quality of affect and feeling, and the likely evaluative function offeeling in the process of emotion. According to a simple psychologicalmodelwhether hydraulic or non-hydraulic in Barbara Rosenweins

termsemotion exemplifies the course from an input to an output in theblack box of a living organism by representing a series of linear, thoughparallel, sequences of changes in the state of this organism (cf. Rosenwein2002, 834, 837).9 The tacit progress from the initial perceptual stimulus toan incitement to act would thus encompass both the registration of the feltexcitation and the personal encoding of the feeling, which happensaccording to cultural schemas constitutive of the experiencing person. Theoutput is usually a change in ones appearance and behaviour, but it may aswell lead to a suppression of outer expression or action.

Instead of a traditional linear model, I would like to propose a semioticvariant for bodily and mental events of emotional signs which rather areseen to interact with each other in a three-dimensional nodal networkknown as the model of constraint satisfaction framework (Feldman Barrettet al., 2006). This neuropsychological model is created as a result of acomparison of bodily and brain action potentials with psychic reactions, anextensive testing method which has enabled the development of a renewedinsight into the mutual organisation of emotional components. Keeping thenetwork model in mind, I will try to establish semiotic terms for the bodily

and mental events of emotion emerging in the experiencing organism in thelight of Damasios somatic marker hypothesis, which is akin toLeDouxs twin-path theory of emotional appraisal that will be discussedin the end of this section. Before continuing, it is nonetheless important tostress that we can never equate neural mechanisms with mentaloccurrences; rather, we must view the results of functional neuroimagingas mere correlates of the mind (Damasio 2000, 82-83). Whereas neuralnetworks have their own paradigmatically specific functional units, thedescription of their activation system cannot be equated with events in themind, which never overlap with the intertwinement of neural regions and

their extremely complex cooperation (cf. Nalbantian 2003, 145).10 Yet, toreach a new understanding of human consciousness including emotion, two

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procedures have been combined: external studies, such as the activation ofneural locations, and internal studies, such as the expressed sensations andfeelings of the person participating in the experiment (Damasio 2000, 82).It is this dual experimentation which has led to the increased mapping ofneural pathways in relation to emotional reactions, whereupon the networkmodel of the emotional process has become possible. Nevertheless, despitetheir neural correlates, the cultural interpretation of the bodily responses ofemotion, and, specifically, the evaluative aspect of emotion devolves uponpsychology, cultural studies, and social sciences.

Damasios Jamesian model underlines that, aside from being abiologically automatic species-specific defense mechanism, emotion is aculturally evaluative phenomenon.11 His neurophysiology of mind views

emotion as occurring in a holistic organism, where the brain is understoodas a seamless part of the body. The brains ability to feel emotionnecessitates a theory of consciousness, to which purpose Damasiopostulates an innovative concept of the core self. This core self provides anonverbal sense of self, on which are built the autobiographical self andidentity over the span of a lifetimea welcome idea after the post-modernatmosphere of fragmented subjectivity. As a precondition for the core self,Damasio posits the necessary existence of core consciousness formediating the affective excitation of the body for the brain (Damasio 2000,

169-176). In semiotic terms, sensing the feeling of somatic arousal ofprimary emotions such as happiness, sadness, fear, anger, surprise, ordisgust (Damasio 2000, 50; cf. Prinz 2004, 86-91)12 designates a search ofthe core self from the level of Peircean firstness in the present to a higherlevel of mental operation of secondness dealing with the past, and reachingout for an extended consciousness on a more complex level ofautobiographical self, thirdness, and the future (Merrell 2003, 6, 146-148,170-185). Regarding the more complex emotions, and their role ofproviding positive or negative options for acting, Damasio calls the

visceral and nonvisceral sensations somatic markers. He defines somaticmarkers as a special instance of feelings generated from secondaryemotions such as envy, jealousy, guilt, embarrassment, pride, remorse, orshame (Damasio 2000, 51, 286). Damasios somatic marker hypothesis ofcomplex emotions may open a pathway for an understanding of theprogressive nature of the cultural elaboration of our emotional judgements,which I understand as taking place as an embodied dialogue throughaffective indices mediating knowledge between inner perception of thebody and outer perception of the world.

Damasio describes emotions as using the body for their theatre,affecting the brain circuits, and thereby being responsible for profoundchanges both in the body landscape and that of the brain. Most telling for

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literary semiotics, the neural patterns which become feelings of emotionare, in Damasios terms, monitored by the changing landscape of the brain

(Damasio 2000, 51-52). If there is a triggering internal sensation, or anexternal perceptual object, for example, a touching literary expression, itsets the gradual process of emotion in motion in the organism by activatingthe autonomic nervous and hormonal system to elicit visceral and senso-motor signals in the body. These sensations can be semiotically understoodas genuine indexical signs standing for the ongoing bodily change.Furthermore, they can be identified on the basis of physical contiguity asPeircean reagentstraces or symptomsthat is, signs that emanate fromtheir causative object, and are metonymically related to that object

(Johansen 2002, 35). Since they are part of an innately set brain systemwhich is laid down and selected by a long evolutionary history, thesebodily responses are automatic, stereotypical, regulatory mechanismsresponsible for the organisms homeostatic balance (Damasio 2000, 51). Ina nonverbal, unconscious dialogue within the organism, these bodilyindices tacitly take care of our physical and social survival in the world.

Going further in the emotional process, still more fascinating isDamasios idea of the brains natural capability to monitor its ownchanging landscape, an activity which refers to our inborntemporally

progressiveself-reflexive faculty (Damasio 2000, 51-52). As the brainmonitors the changing landscape in the theatre of the body (internal milieu,visceral, vestibular, and musculosceletal systems), and its own changinglandscape, the body echoes this variety of sensations as feedback to theongoing brain circuits. This interaction on the level of secondness leads thebrain to feel the feeling of emotion. Processed further, interactively withthe brain, the feeling of feelinga wordless, implicit knowingofemotion is recognized and named using cultural labels, such as the primarysix emotions: happiness, sadness, fear, anger, surprise, and disgust(Damasio 2000, 50-53).13 The semantic labels of emotion are therefore to

be qualified as designations, another subclass of the indexical signs, which,instead originating causally from their object, locate, identify, and point totheir object in the given physical universe (Johansen 2002, 37). Thebrains self-reflexive cognitive ability thus completes the interplay betweenbodily sensations and the activation of the brain itself as a nonverbaldialogue within the organism. The final selection from among severalcultural labels is a meta-level event deeply intertwined with the personscultural framework and her/his individual experiences, needs and values. Itthus represents a formation of an interpretant which belongs to the level of

thirdness. That is why I suggest that the self-monitoring function of thebrain is a significant correlate to the self-corrective activity in the readingexperience, especially, in cases of the self-conscious, indirect literary

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devices we have to live with in modern culture (cf. Bell 2000, 206-207). Iwill return to this detail in the next section as I discuss Jenefer Robinsonstheory of emotional evaluation of post-modern, self-reflexive texts.

Among philosophers and psychologists of emotion, there is majordisagreement concerning the kind of evaluations constituted by emotions(Robinson 2005, 27). Both Damasio and LeDoux present a criticalalternative to the traditional judgement theory of emotion according towhich emotions are simply judgements, albeit of a special and intense kindof evaluations (Robinson 2005, 25-27, 54).14 Each divides the evaluativeaspect of emotion into two phases. For Damasio, the first reaction to atriggering stimulus automatically signals an immediate danger, neutralityor safety, and provokes the brain into making the initial choice between

these options. After this event, special feelings serve a prolongedevaluation, allowing us to choose among alternatives which areconnected, by learning, to predicted future outcomes of certain scenarios(Damasio 1996, 173-174).15 Similarly, Le Douxs twin-pathway approachto the elicitation of emotion divides the evaluative phases of emotion intonon-cognitive and cognitive appraisals. First, an extremely rapid somaticresponse presents itself as the initial trigger on the axis good/bad ordangerous/safe. This is called the non-cognitive or affective appraisal oraffective computation (Griffiths 2003, 45). After this immediate

reaction, the cognitive appraisal or cognitive computation is initiated,eventually ending up, after a psychic struggle, as a behavioural change(LeDoux 1996; Robinson 2005, 59-63, 78, 122-125; cf. Prinz 2003, 81).

An interim conclusion to the problem of emotional evaluation,cognition and emotion should be thought of as separate but interactingmental functions mediated by separate but interacting brain functions(Robinson 2005, 36). It is also plausible to voice the same idea in reverse:mental functions are mediating brain functions, and they make it in aseamless cooperation of cognition and emotion in an embodied mind. In

semiotic terms, somatic markers have the nature of double indices. Deep inthe core of the emotional experience, they consist of bodily reagentsarising from internal or external stimuli, while, upon these reagents, newdesignations arise as interpretants of the feeling of these reagents. As thesedesignations help us to reject bad options on the level of secondness, theyforce us towards a more detailed analysis of the potential consequences ofthe action planned. Hence, the cognitive appraisal of these designationscontinues on the level of thirdness as a prolonged parallel multiprocessingof mental representations (cf. Merrell 2003, 165). Altogether, theprocedure of this sequence of interpretants displays the deep intertwiningof cultural cognition and emotion in an embodied mind. As Damasiowrites:

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Somatic markers are thus acquired by experience, under the control of an

internal preference system and under the influence of an external set ofcircumstances which include not only entities and events with which theorganism must interact, but also social conventions and ethical rules.(Damasio 2000, 179)

To summarize, during the semiosis of emotion, a bodily reagent is atfirst registered automatically as a feeling of a bodily change, according toan inherent species-specific schema as a bottom-up event in the neuralsystem. In this schematic phase, feeling is a genuine index, which can beidentified as a designation pointing to physical reagents.16 This intrinsicneural designation evokes a new sign, mediated by another feeling on ameta-level, and results in an interpretant, a cultural mode of designation,akin to a warning label on a bottle of poison. While understood as a pre-verbal cognitive activity arising from bodily reagents, the semiotic statusof feeling seems to transpose from one characterized as physical to that ofa semantic label that can be expressed in language. Both primary andsecondary emotions always require complex cognitive judgements, and itis by means of such judgements that we are able to distinguish oneemotional state from another (Damasio 2000, 55). Moreover, emotions arecontinuously regulated by other, controlling brain regions as learned top-

down processes (Ochsner and Gross 2005). As an embodied correlate for amental emotional dialogue, a serially connected system of neural networksseems to tune and direct the individual experience of perception,independently of the perceptual quality of the triggering sign. Whether it isvisual, senso-motoric, audible, gustatory, olfactory, vestibular, a linguisticutterance or a text does not seem to make a difference. Rather, theevaluative role of emotion for cognition in social life and reading literarytext is the same. Ultimately, the sequence of the non-cognitive andcognitive appraisals indicates the way in which the evaluative aspect of

emotion produces personal beliefs concerning self, other, and the world inliterary reading as well as in social life.

Expressive Enactment of Literary Episodes

During Affective Reading

As Patrick Colm Hogan notes, with few exceptions, biological andanthropological emotion studies still ignore the extensive amount ofexisting data of feelings pertinent both to literary narratives eliciting

feelings and literary studies tracing the operations of emotion (Hogan2003, 1). I will discuss some semiotic issues on the role of emotions inreading by bringing three works into dialogue with one another, which all

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appreciate emotional response in literary experience. Most relevant for myinterest concerning the impact of literary form on emotion is David S.Mialls recent workLiterary Reading(2006), whose extensive theoreticalarsenal of literary research is coupled with the results of theneurophysiology of emotion. Miall updates the adaptation of brain studiesto literature in the light of empirical research on emotion in reading,implemented during the last decade by research groups formed aroundhimself and Don Kuiken. Second, I refer to Jenefer Robinsonsphilosophical study Deeper than Reason, already quoted above, whichstresses the physiology of emotion by leaning mainly on LeDouxsneuroscientific findings. She interprets a number of novels in light of awide-ranging body of emotional theories adapted in literature, including

those of psychoanalytical research. The third relevant pragmatist, devotedto the affective experience of reading, is Louise M. Rosenblatt, whosetheory of transactional reading in her workThe Reader, the Text, the Poem(1978) foreshadows the two other reports of the topic in an insightfulfashion.

Both Miall and Robinson share several aspects on the role of emotionin human reasoning, especially, the evolutionary dimension. They agree onthe idea that a fictional text evokes physical emotion processes in the sameway as in emotionally charged situations in real life (Robinson 2005, 108,

145; Miall 2006, 3, 21, 72-78). Semiotically, this suggests that language isable to elicit a continual inner dialogue of indexical signs in the adaptiveunconscious of an embodied mind which resonate with the readerspersonal life-world. In the frame of reference of the paradox of fiction,Miall and Robinson consider emotion a necessary experiential device forunderstanding aesthetic and ethical meanings of literary works besidesthose of pure causal origin, which gives the reader renewed faculties tocope with life. Envisaging emotional response as both physiological andevaluative, they come to similar inferences concerning the readers

strategies of emotional involvement in the fictional world by exploringher/his identification with literary elements such as characters or narrators,situations, events, and settings (cf. Robinson 2005, 113; Miall 2006, 73-74, 109). They largely specify readers reactions to content and form:thematic and stylistic devices, and narrative strategies such as point ofview and tropes. Both conclude that emotional evaluation characteristic ofa reading experience has an animating impact on mental images throughthe readers bodily memory. This result conforms to Rosenblatts statementthat the meaning of a literary work emerges as the readers attention to thetext activates certain elements in her/his past experience that have becomelinked with verbal symbols as the reader senses them (Rosenblatt 1978,11, italics hers).

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Despite these similarities which seem to direct attention to multisensorycomponents of memory images, Robinsons and Mialls accounts diverge

when they assess the impact of formal qualities of literature on emotionalresponse. For Robinson, form is not so much [] an object of ouraesthetic admiration in its own right, but a means of guiding and managingour emotional experience of a work of literature (Robinson 2005, 196).She ends her adaptation of LeDouxs twin-path sequence of affective andcognitive appraisals of emotion to reading experience with RichardLazaruss theory of psychological coping mechanisms. Despite previouslymentioning the importance of textually touching episodes for emotionalpeaks, she develops the idea of emotion-focused, cognitive coping

strategies into an evaluation of negative emotions occurring on both theunconscious and conscious levels with the help of psychoanalyticalprocedures, such as avoidance, denial and intellectualisation (Robinson2005, 197-202). This methodological choice compels Robinson to makeuse of the Freudian codification of personality structure and symbolicexpression in the vein of Norman Holland, especially, the concept ofidentity theme which guides the reader to adjust her/his emotionalexperiencing of fictional reality in the same characteristic manner thatregulates the writers textual coping with reality (Robinson 2005, 205).17

For Robinson, the impact of literary stylistics on the reading experienceculminates in the (implied) authors ability to guide and manage thereaders pleasurable insights into real life. As a result, post-moderndistancing conveyed by foregrounding strategies seems to manipulate andcontrol the readers emotional responses to such a high degree that theemotional reward of reading may be swept away (Robinson 2005, 227-228). This position raises the question of the experiential and intellectualvalue of those emotional appraisals that take place as an interaction at allthe levels of our innate emotional faculties: on the level of the adaptiveunconscious (firstness), on the temporal and causal level (secondness), and

on multiple levels of self-reflexivity (thirdness) enabled by the brainsnatural ability to monitor its own changing landscape, as mentionedabove. However, despite Freudian terms, which I see as being toorestrictive when thinking anew the functioning of the adaptiveunconscious, Robinsons LeDouxian interpretation illuminates the multi-faceted power of literary discourse to regulate the feelings of the reader; italso indicates the intermittent and intrusive role of somatic reactions asprogressing from non-cognitive appraisals towards the cognitive monitoringof literary elements.

Instead, in his more polemical confrontation with a cognitivism thatfails to take feeling seriously, Miall addresses the notions of literarinessand foregrounding as vital starting points for the emotional understanding

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of literature. In contrast to what is presumed by cognitive poetics, namelythat the same cognitive mechanisms apply to all interaction, he claims thatfeeling in reading shows us what is unique in literary interaction (Miall2006, 46). His own endeavour is to integrate feeling into the structures ofresponse already laid out in cognitive terms in cognitive poetics by givingpriority to feeling when appropriate. He verifies his hypotheses by aseries of carefully planned psychological tests with actual (ordinary)readers,18 whose problematic status as research objects he defends againstthe literary theorists monopoly to define the nature of literature and theself-renewing power of canonical works (for more explicit argumentation,see Miall and Kuiken 1998). Overall, Miall speaks for emotion as astrategy that may refresh sensing and cognition, cause dehabituation and

the development of emphatic reading (Miall 2006, 4, 44-45). These ideas,among thoseof renewed schema creation during reading under the controlof feeling, nurture my semiotic discussion of the relationship betweenmetaphor and metonymy presented in the last section.

Mialls and Kuikens empirical studies are prompted by and, at thesame time, devoted to patch up the ignorance of emotion in cognitivepoetics, in which interest lies merely in cognitive functions, such asdeixis, schemas and frames, figure and ground, theory of mind, and thelike (Miall 2006, 3). Their pairing of interpretive and emotional modes of

reading creates an interesting parallel to Rosenblatts division of readinginto two complementary types. Just as Rosenblatt juxtaposes transactional,aesthetic reading to efferent reading as a mode of problem solving byanalytical inference, Miall distinguishes between the literary experience asimbued with emotion and literary interpretation as analytical and linear(see Rosenblatt 1978, 22-47).19 These new empirical studies thus manageto verify the hypothesis on transactional reading as an emotionally livedexperience, which Rosenblatt has tested systematically in her classes forfour decades so as to formulate her theory (Rosenblatt 1978, x).20

Reinforcing these studies, Mialls and Kuikens tests provide a relevantneuropsychological background for the elaboration of an embodiedaesthetic feelingthe one Rosenblatt strives for by seeing cognitive andemotive abilities as fused aspects of the same lived-through experience(Rosenblatt 1978, 46).21

Keeping the concept of feeling as central in empirical research ofreading in a Damasian vein, Miall proposes that all reading experience ispenetrated by self-modifyingpowers of feeling. Termed self-implicationby Kuiken and Miall, the readers self-modification arises from aninteraction of narrative and aesthetic modes of feeling.22 While narrativefeelings prepare the necessary suspension for a motivated reading, theaesthetic feeling refers to an embodied reaction to foregrounding

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techniques serving literariness.23 Most importantly, the concept ofliterariness is redefined as an interactive process between formal features

and the series of a readers emotional and cognitive responses, instead ofdefining it merely as a result of formal qualitiesas in new criticism(Miall 2006, 144; Miall and Kuiken 1998). This interactively conveyedliterariness consists, besides causal reasoning, in a series of bodilyresponses in the feeling reader, provoked by narrative and otherforegrounding poetic functions, such as assonance, metre, syntacticinversion, or metaphor (Miall 2006, 18, 146). The readers encounter withforegrounding devices may feature the arousal of memories, which in turnevoke the feeling of a heightened sense of self and empathy. According to

Shklovskys idea of defamiliarisation, the interpretive effort of alinguisticallynot necessarily literary trainedcompetent reader leads toa refreshed schema creation through a more vivid seeing and hearing,which prepares her/him for a renewed response to the life-world (Miall andKuiken 1998, 6, 8-10).

Mialls analysis of the readers overall emotional involvement inliterature culminates in a phenomenological type of reading experiencetermed expressive enactment, originally identified by the empiricaltesting made by Kuiken, Miall and Sikora in 1998. Importantly, expressive

enactment substitutes the traditional terms of identification and empathy. Itis based on the readers own figurative ability and emerges during readingfrom the fusion of aesthetic and narrative feelings, which together supplyself-modifying feelings that contribute to the readers personalidentification. Prompted by some foregrounding passage reminiscent ofsome memory image of the reader, expressive enactment of the literary textgives rise to the felt presence of some touching life episode (Kuiken,Miall and Sikora 2004, 186),24 while felt presence refers to aesthetictensions constituting the presence of a perceived object and felt moredirectly than through projection or empathy, a phenomenon already

analysed by Rudolf Arnheim in 1974 (see Kuiken 1995, 142-143).Furthermore, the embodied felt presence evokes an emotional tension inthe reader on the basis of a memory, felt engagement, which creates anascent mental representation: a new figurative metaphor having the sameaffective charge as the memorized life episode, thereby generatingunavoidable self-modifying tension (Kuiken et al. 2004, 264, 276-277).25

Such affective interaction is consistent with Rosenblatts idea of the powerof a textual episode in transactional reading: Some scene, some briefdialogue, some episode may spark an insight into ones own or anothers

nature, or unleash a new way of understanding, a new sense ofpossibilities (Rosenblatt 1978, 160). What is more, the affect shiftcreating this self-understanding seems most often to occur iteratively,

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between two textual variations of episodes, both displaying a thematicallysimilar topic.26 Offering repetitively a special preconceptual, unconscioustwist or insight for the reader, expressive enactment implies a deepeningseries of emotional transitions by proceeding through a cycle ofdefamiliarisation and recontextualisation, the dynamics of which Mialllinks with the cooperative division of neural activity between right and leftbrain hemispheres (Miall 2006, 145-148).

The model of the readers expressive enactment of the text is by naturehighly dialogical, and in accordance with the intrinsic indexicality oflanguage that is able to provoke mental icons while it simultaneouslydirects and articulates these icons (Veivo 2001, 102). This chain ofindexical icons can be investigated in the light of the neural model of

specific mirror neuron systems which is based on recent evidence fromfunctional neuroimaging techniques and supports the idea of our inbornemotional connectedness (see e.g. Rizzolatti 2000; Iacoboni 2005). Aresult of human evolutionary adaptation, mirror neurons are the separatenetworks of functional units supposed to underlie our social interaction.The mirror neuron system seems to be responsible for our innate ability toshare emotions, anticipate the others intentions, and feel empathy towardsothers, as a neural correlate to human dialogical relations. Every time aperson looks at another persons movements and gestures displaying

emotions and intentions, the onlookers mirror neurons, corresponding tothose of the observed person, are activated. They seem to be imitating thewiring of the acting persons mirror neurons in question, even though theonlooker does not initiate the same activities. What is more stimulating forliterary semiotics is that the particular mirror neurons start firing also whenhearing or reading a narrative about such activities (Keen 2006, 207).27

Accordingly, the same mirroring takes place in the expressive enactmentduring reading, as it conveys reflexive emphatic abilities in the form ofself-resonant understanding of anothers experiential perspective

regardless of whether the other is a narrator, character or personifiedobject (Kuiken et al. 2004, 269).

Hence, if the foregrounding devices of the text evoke other realitiesdifferent from those of ones own, the expressive enactment makes visibleour innate dialogical ability of reading the indexically loaded icons of theothers mind, while blurring the boundary between self and the fictionalother. The reading experience thus makes palpable ones creativecapability of acting in a socially shared world, and the understanding of thepossible (virtual) existence of other realities different from ones own. Asthe felt presence of another reality is lived in the emotional theatre ofthe body through embodied figurative dynamics arising from memory andimagination, a search for new meanings may occur by renewing learned

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schemas (Miall, 2006, 143, 145). Apparently, the mirror neuron systemmight be the missing correlate providing an answer to a number of

questions concerning the dialogical nature of expressive enactmentpresented explicitly in Mialls work (cf. Keen 2006, 217-218).

Indexicality in Iconicity: the Affectivity of Metaphor

One of the most intriguing questions that semiotics presents forcognitive poetics is the extent to which the innate mental schemasunderlying metaphorical expressions are working in an unmediatedfashion, and not acting as signs (Veivo 2001, 106-107). I argue that,

parallel to the neglect of emotion in cognitive poetics, semiotics ignoresthe manifold indexical sign qualities of affect, feeling, and emotion. Theindexical aspect of the linguistic sign is overlooked in literary semiotics,even though the Peircean pragmatic concept of triadic sign presupposesthat all three dimensions are present on all signs (CP 4.531; Veivo 2001,104). On the grounds of the Damasian theory of emotion, I propose thatthe biological schemas underlying metaphorical expressions act as signsprimarily by virtue of their indexical dimension. What is more, I suggestthat both automatised, highly conditioned, everyday schemas/metaphors

and creative metaphors are mediated by the various modes of indexicalitycharacteristic of emotional processes, which may refresh them in bodilylived reading experience.

Underlying my argument of the indexicality of every icon (the principleof metonymically motivated metaphor) is Roman Jakobsons (1956)seminal article on metaphor and metonymy, which culminates with thethesis that metonymic and metaphoric devices compete in every symbolicprocess, be it intrapersonal or social. To Jakobson, the idea of a unipolarschema is the result of a cultural contiguity disorder reminiscent of a

certain type of aphasic pattern, that is, the contexture deficiency producingmetaphorical mistakes which has been identified in psychological studies.Since the division between metaphor and metonymy is too often seen asclear-cut, different genres have been analysed by giving these tropes adifferent function and weight, with the metaphorical principle mainlyregulating poetry and metonymical principle dominating prose. Instead,Jakobson argues for a ubiquitous bipolar cooperation of metaphor andmetonymy in language. Following this idea, I hold the semantic similarityand contrast characteristic of metaphorical expressions as being deeplyintertwined with the principle of contiguity characteristic of metonymy

(Jakobson 1988 [1956], 57, 60-61).

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The layout of expressive enactment presented above supports well mysemiotic idea of the indexical dimension being present in literary signs byvirtue of the emotions evoked by a literary text. Yet, in order to elaboratethe idea of how creative metaphors animate the readers response bybodily figuration, Lakoff and Johnsons metaphor theory of embodiedcognition necessarily needs more precision. Their widely accepted theorysupposes that cognition relies on an intrinsic metaphoricality of languagewhile holding human thought to be an existentially grounded visuo-spatialphenomenon. Famously, Lakoff and Johnson trace the origins of ourintangibly abstract thoughts back to the multisensory body. The cognitivefaculty develops in an organic continuity with the body from earlychildhood on in a symphonic process of perceptual and sensory-motoric

orientation in temporally ordered, three-dimensional space. This sensory-motoric bodily intelligence is formed with the development of the brain,and hand-in-hand with a metaphorical development both on the linguisticand the sensory level. The audio-visual and proprioceptive facultiestactile, haptic, kinaesthetic and proxemic bodily qualities, in connectionwith the manifold sense of balancefunction with the directions up/down,in front/behind, inside/outside, and with the feeling of presence/absence(Lakoff 1987, 370-373; Danesi 1993, 110-119, 123). Starting from thismodel, a number of prominent scholars argue that these dimensions are

loaded with cultural values on the axis of good/bad, or dangerous/safe,while they form a few invariable schemata on the preconceptual level (seee.g. Bell 1992, 36-37, 98-107).28 These theories represent our sensory-motor relationship with our perceptual surroundings mentally as visuo-spatial images having a virtual character, yet, without any reference tothe role of emotion in the development of this relationship.

Obviously, this cognitive model of the innate metaphoricality of humanthought does not take into account the affective dimensions of metaphor.As Miall indicates, whereas Mark Johnsons usage of image schemas

neglects their affective and kinaesthetic aspects, the evaluative dimensionof complex emotions and schemas can convincingly be examined on thebodily basis of meaning with the affective aspects of metaphor in readingresponse (Miall 1998; Miall 2006, 44, 81-83, 152). As noted above, anemotion provoked by a striking textual episode elicits a series ofneuropsychological changes both in the body proper and the brain, whichcan be envisaged as indices: both reagents and designations. Qualifiable asa bodily interpretant of the literary sign, the felt presence which ismediated by indices arising from the bodily mirrored linguistic episode, isautomatically designated on the axis of good/bad by a non-cognitiveappraisal based on the readers personal experiences, beliefs, and values.The indexical aspect of the bodily response thus creates an emotional

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dimension to the metaphorical figure, and vigorously guides the intialevaluation of the metaphor, thereby contributing to the experience of the

textual image. Then, mediated in the experiencing subject by a catalyticsequence of feelings, the bodily interpretant evoked by the textual object issubordinated to a more complex cognitive consideration of the reader (cf.Robinson 2005, 61-63).

In a Damasian theory of mind, the mental representation of feeling is amultisensory image such as a memory, or an imagination. The recalledimage is never merely visual, but simultaneously olfactory, vestibular,tactile, as well as a visceral and somatosensory image, having qualities oftemperature and pain (Damasio 2000, 318). These polyphonic traces of a

continually changing multisensory image are preserved in the emotionalbrain connected with their external triggers nature and shape. When atouching literary expression has the power to elicit some memory image inthe reader, this affect is kindled by an impulse reminiscent of some iconicfeature of the lived, emotionally powerful experience. At that moment, themultisensory memory image is brought from the bodily (non-declarative)recesses of the implicit long-term memory into the readers workingmemory. When this iconic interpretant evokes a series of affectiveindexical signs in the reader, the feeling of an emotional memory has a

direct dual relation to its object, the literary text, on the basis of physicalcontiguity. Seen as embedded in mental schemas or metaphorical models,the feeling of emotion produces meaning as a double sign-process: throughthe iconic dimension of the literary sign, and through the affectiveindexicality of the readers response. But it is this affective indexicality ofthe body which contextualizes the text in the lived world through thereaders autobiographical memory. In this way, via embodied affectivity,indexicality hides ubiquitously in every metaphor, or in all iconic signs. Inother words, the aspect of contiguity is always intertwined with the aspectof iconicity through our innate emotional faculty.

Kuiken, Miall and Sikora (2004, 182-183) give an illustrative exampleof this indexical, emotional impact residing in the iconic figure, which isable to create a metaphor of self-identification in the reader.29 In KatherineMansfields short story The Wrong House a touching passage evoking awounding memory during a personal crisis in the reader was the sentenceThe houses opposite looked as though they had been cut out with a pair ofugly steel scissors and pasted to the grey paper sky. The readerremembered a wounding period of time in her early life, and told herexperience of this textual view in an interview as follows:

I could actually see the street and the houses. So there was a great imagerythere it reminded me of the street that I lived on when I was young. We

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lived in a small town in southern Alberta and the houses looked likethat; they looked like they had been cut out with ugly steel scissors.

The readers bodily response was an anguished feeling correspondingto that of the past memory, elicited by the image, as if the silhouettes of thebuildings had preserved her feelings in the visual and implicit memory ofher embodied mind. What happens here is the inversion of Proustianmemory technique: a striking textual figure evokes an emergent, personallyimportant affective theme by its indexical, metonymic, elements whichbring into mind the trace left by sharp cutting blades, the thinness andflatness of the paper, and the dull colour of gray, all referring to thedepressive condition of that time of life. The effect would perhaps not be

reached, and the emotion not felt at all, if the simile had been, for example:the houses looked as though they had been moulded of olive greenmodelling paste. It is the tactile, kinaesthetic, and affective functions ofthe indices in the verbal icon evoked by Mansfields figure which make onthe reader an emotional impact reminiscent of her personal crisis, andtherefore, a new metaphor of self-identificationan interpretantiscreated from among her implicit, bodily memories. Aided by an expressiveenactment of the text, a felt variation of this affective metaphor sets heremotional process in motion, thereby propelling her self-implication.

The same process is illuminated by Barthess description of punctumin his late workLa chambre claire (1980, Camera Lucida 1981). Barthesswriting project was a conscious inversion of the writing method of MarcelProust, who was Barthess idol throughout his life. As Proust concentratedon the olfactory, gustatory, tactile and postural or kinesthetic sensations ofhis involuntary memory in order to evoke visual engrams orsubconscious mental records of unhappy incidents in the past, they servedas material for his extensive musings and contemplations (Nalbantian2003, 63-64). In comparison, Barthess punctum is an impressive

inversion of Prousts method. Barthess concentration on a historicallyiconic document, a photo, made him conscious of the indexicality of hisaffective body. For textual purposes, Barthes slowed down to the extremethe feeling of his emerging affect elicited by some wounding detail in thephoto, the feeling he termed punctum. As some denotative detail of thephoto unexpectedly displaced his analytical consideration of the object, thestudium, he felt his undifferentiated affective sensations of excitement,restlessness, or passion as an emanation of the referent (Barthes 1981,80). He textualised his wavering feelings in La chambre claire by usingnumerous eloquent metaphors full of metonymical references to tactile,

audial, and visual indices. As parts of metaphors, metonyms transferred hisfelt presence of the past as a stowaway into the present (Runia 2006,

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1). In light of this example, literature can be understood as aninterchangeable chain of affective metonymies through time: a personal

embodied memory, transformed into a mental image in textual creation,may touch the autobiographical implicit memory of the reader/viewerthrough the feeling of his/her bodily sensations. But again, a new figurativemetaphor, created by the reader as an outcome of the expressive enactmentof the text, is deeply dialogical while imbued with the indexicaldimensions of a multisensory mental image, and is able to re-embody themetonymical dimension of the textual figure in relation to the readers past,with all its emotional consequences.

Conclusion

Emotion is an organic component of continuous bioregulation of theorganism, but it is also a critical factor contributing to cognitive processes,such as perception, learning and decision-making (Damasio 2001, 101).Just as the intensity and quality of feeling depend on the readersexpectations, attitudes, and beliefs, the evaluations based on emotionsdepend on learned, culturally conditioned schemas underlying them. In thisrespect, to feel a fresh emotion may be a matter of felt engagement, yet as

a result of careful cognitive deliberation after becoming aware of the initialnon-cognitive affect and its somatic counterparts. In literary reading, freshmetaphors can help readers to see their own lives and relations to others ina new light, which leads to a profound change of stereotypical beliefs intheir own cultures or subcultures, thus modulating their attitudes to theworld (cf. Wolheim 2003, 26). The form and style of literature thus seemsto have the power to deepen ones understanding of the world throughemotion. The contextualising factor in this process is the indexicaldimension which hides like a stowaway in every mental image, and in

every literary metaphor. The metaphors iconic aspect is based onsimilarity, but as affectivity during reading imbues the metaphor, feeling ofthe affect is the catalyst that imparts the indexical aspect into everymetaphor. Thus, a more balanced usage of the Peircean sign in thephenomenology of perception, as well as in the cognitive theory ofmetaphor, is completed by making visible the indexical dimension iniconic and symbolic signs. As a result, such a concept of metaphor, inwhich affect plays an indexical, dynamic role in the adaptive unconscious,has an intrinsic capacity to transform a human beings ethical andbehavioural attitudes.

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Notes

1. Patricia Greenspan criticizes the choice of the title of Damasios first popularbook, Descartes Error. She notes that Damasio implicitly concedes thatDescartes cogito includes the mental aspect of emotions as he quotes his detailedaccount on emotions in The Passions of the Soul, where Descartes views emotionas an element bridging the gap between body and mind (Greenspan 2003, 113-114).2. Currently, some cognitive theorists have proposed to include emotion or affectin cognition, thereby removing the most fruitful innovation of neural research forcultural studies: the specificity of an emotional brain. My semiotic intention is tobenefit from this evidence, and operate between two academic approaches toemotionthe neurobiological/evolutionary psychological line, and the humanist

line. A representative example of the historical interaction of these two lines ofresearch is Suzanne Nalbantians work, which indicates that the culturalconception of emotion in relation to perception and memory tends to propel andmodify the period codes of literature (Nalbantian 2003).3. Deighs thorough article does not, however, give Jamess precise reference.4. On the connectionist model of parallel distributing theory of emotion as aplausible option for a more traditional localist model, see Feldman Barrett et al.2006.5. Besides Darwins studies, Paul Ekmans studies on facial expressions are themost known examples of observable nonverbal signs of emotions. Yet, Damasios

apparatus of observable signs of emotions is more informative, especially, onproxemics as a manifestation of background emotions.6. Lately, some prominent psychologsts have voiced the opinion that the conceptof cognition will eventually disappear from scientific research altogether. Indeed,the focus of consciousness studies has shifted to the interaction of awareness andperception in relation to memory, where motivation and arousal of the self play animportant role as mediators aside from cognitive processes (Jari Takatalos lectureon cognitive film theory in the University of Helsinki, 21 April 2006; see alsoPrinz 2004, 41-49).7. See Feldman Barrett et al. (2006) for a detailed history of psychological emotion

research, and their model of constraint satisfaction approach to emotion.8. Without defining cognition, Jesse Prinz qualifies Damasios theory amongnoncognitive theories of emotion, which suppose that all true emotions involvecognitions. However, Prinz simplifies the Damasian model of the progressivenetwork system of multi-level feelings (see Prinz 2003, 69-70).9. I thank Lisa Muszynski for drawing my attention to Rosenweins critical reviewconcerning the historical development of models of emotion. The medievalhydraulic model reduces emotion to a liquid-like oscillation between heavingand frothing that refer to notions such as humors and energy, and connotes thephenomenon with the binarity of on or off, ideas of which continue toorganize our metaphors of the subject. The non-hydraulic models refer tocognitive models of the 1960s and those of social constructionism of the 1970s(Rosenwein 2002, 834-837).

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10. In his worklHomme neuronal, Jean-Pierre Changeux states that the debate onthe mind-body problem only exists when one affirms that the functional

organization of the nervous system does not correspond to its neural organization(Nalbantian 2003, 145).11. Feldman Barrett et al. (2006) largely discusses the advantages of a constraintsatisfaction approach to emotion. They compare and specify the nature of the hard-wired bottom-up automatic mode and controlling top-down mode of emotionalappraisal. More evidence is produced on the strong cognitive regulatorymechanisms of emotions in humans by Ochsner and Gross (2005).12. Prinz discusses the problem of defining basic emotions in the frame of recentpsychological approaches.13. As Aaron Ben-zeev notes, the criteria of basic, or simple, and nonbasic,

or complex, emotions vary from one theory to another. Considered as a mode ofthe whole mental system, rather than a mental elementsuch as disposition,capacity, feeling, or type of intentional reference, emotion may be described infruitfully renewed ways in the future (Ben-zeev 2004, 267). Here I will use theterms primary and secondary emotions for these two categories. The collection ofprimary emotions varies slightly according to the writer. However, most oftenthese six are mentioned, sometimes including rage. The primary emotions are hard-wired, bottom-up events, while the secondary emotions are regulated through acomplex top-down system. (See also Prinz 2004, 150-159).14. For a more specified description of multilevel appraisal theory, see Griffiths2004. Cf. Robert Solomons corrective comment on his previous thinking of

judgement theory, in Solomon 2003, 82.15. On the regulation of emotions, and learning and forgetting them, see Ochsner& Gross (2005); on the relativity and position of the unconscious action-orientedtrigger system and hedonic valence in human life, see Feldman Barrett et al.(2006).16. Aaron Ben-zeev defines the feeling dimension of emotion as the lowest levelof consciousness which has no significant cognitive content, different from thelevels found in perception, memory and thinking. Moreover, he claims feelings notto be intentional (Ben-zeev 2004, 252-253).17. Robinson permits interpreting some novels and poems psychoanalytically

according to Norman Hollands usage of Freudian terms of defence mechanisms,such as reversal, reaction-formation, repression, denial, projection, introjection,regression, splitting, symbolization, sublimaton, and rationalization (Robinson2005, 202-228).18. These tests are implemented in the research groups of REDES in theUniversity of Alberta led by Miall and Kuiken, and reported in several articlespublished between 1994 and 2004. See detailed references in Miall 2006.19. Miall refers to Louise Rosenblatts early work on the topic (Louise M.Rosenblatt: Literature as Exploration 1937), but does not mention her moreelaborated theory of transactional reading published in 1978, which interestingly

centres around affects and feelings as dialogical events (Miall 2006, 89).20. As she explains, intending to immerse herself in a rich source of insights,Rosenblatt observed and reflected on the readers involvements with an extensive

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range of texts from Chaucer and Shakespeare to Joyce and Wallace Stevens. Fortwo decades, during her course on Criticism and the Literary Experience, shecollected evidence to discover continuities and differences in response, and

analysed the processes and patterns manifesting in the actual movement toward aninterpretation (Rosenblatt 1978, x).21. It is noteworthy that Rosenblatts early work on the same topic, Literature asExploration (1937), is based on the philosophies of William James, C. S. Peirce,George Santayana, and John Dewey, besides reflecting the works of Franz Boasand Ruth Benedict.22. As a basic theoretical hypothesis, four modes of literary feelings are discerned;evaluative feelings, such as enjoyment, pleasure, frustration and satisfaction, whichemerge as incentive reactions to the text; narrative feelings, such as suspense,curiosity, and empathy with an author, narrator, or character, which sustain and

develop a fictional world; aesthetic feelings, such as fascination, interest, orintrigue, which constitute the readers response to the formal features of the text;and finally, modifying powers of feelings (Miall and Kuiken 2002).23. Miall argues for the embodied aesthetic feeling in accordance with Coleridgeinstead of Kants disembodied aesthetics (Miall 1997; Miall 2006, 158-171).24. The fundamental specification for the concept of expressive enactment in all itsdetails can be found in the seminal article of Kuiken, Miall, and Sikora (2004).25. Miall uses as an example Kate Chopins The Story of an Hour (1984/1999),where a series of affects shifts the readers creative attention to her/his own lifeepisodes (Miall 2006, 145). Other examples can be found in Kuiken et al. (2004),

and Kuiken, Miall and Sikora (2004).26. The idea of the modifying power of theme variations manifesting an affect shiftis based on Kuikens studies on analogical (metaphorical) structures recurring inexistential dreams (Kuiken 1995). By exploring the dreams of persons who haverecently suffered some loss or bereavement, Kuiken draws his attention to thetransitional pause between two analogical dream episodes. The pause seems to bean especially intensive marker of an unexplicable affect shift between personallysignificant scenes, which promotes the dreamers emotional reorientation to thepast loss.27. Keen refers to articles on current neuroscientific evidence produced with fMRIimaging of the human brain, especially Gallese (2005).28. Catherine Bell reviews the thoughts of Lvi-Strauss, Foucault, Bourdieu,Derrida, and Althusser in connection with the ritual theories of Arnold van Gennepand Victor Turner.29. Kuiken, Miall and Sikora use the same empirical example already in theirearlier article in 1994. But in this fundamental analysis (2004), they at first reasontheir central concepts of self-implication and expressive enactment by exploringColeridges poem The Rime of the Ancient Mariner as a basic example ofaffective reading. The analysis lays the basis for their outline of the fugal form ofexpressive enactment, an idea which I personally find extremely insightful.

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