Date of Award

1-1-2017

Language

English

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

College/School/Department

Department of English

Content Description

1 online resource (iii, x, 182 pages)

Dissertation/Thesis Chair

Richard A. Barney

Committee Members

Richard A. Barney, Mike Hill, James Lilley

Keywords

Affect Theory, History of Emotion, Rise of the Novel, English fiction, Emotions in literature, Emotions (Philosophy)

Subject Categories

English Language and Literature | Epistemology

Abstract

“The passions” were of paramount importance in the 18th century. Classical contexts established excessive emotions as potentially dangerous forces that could override the will and dictate human action, but they also perceived them as inessential to and even extirpable from human nature. With the advent of empiricism, the theoretical framework of emotion shifted from an external condition to an internal proposition. Thus, in the 18th century a conceptual symbiosis is formed between “the Gales of Passion” and “the Reins of Reason” (Spectator, no. 408, 1712). This seemingly archaic idea is actually being confirmed by contemporary neuroscience. For recently discovered neural networks show that emotions are formed in the relay between rational and affective brain centers.

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