How to Study Emotion Effects in Literature Written Emotions in Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Fall of the House of Usher”

Abstract

Reading how Edgar Allan Poe’s narrator-protagonist feels in the midst of the horrifying storyworld, the reader is affected. The emotion words and affective language in general have an impact on us and we react emotionally to his emotion, although the appropriate reaction is regulated by the context and the work as a whole. We all know from personal experience that the emotions of fictional characters or narrators as well as all the emotional contents of literary works affect us as readers. We presume that authors, when writing, not only present us with the factual or emotional realities of the fictional world but also endeavour to move us: they make us feel for, with or against the characters and, all in all, react emotionally to the world created by the text. This includes appreciating and enjoying the style and language through which the storyworld is presented to us. Interaction with the text also involves ways of reacting to the figure of the author that we feel in reading; all the choices made by the author create, in a sense, an emotional profile of the writer. All in all, the author writes to create an emotional response (which does not preclude other communicative intentions) and the reader reacts emotionally as well as intellectually. Affective communication proceeds from the choices of the author in writing to the emotional effects produced in readers, and presupposes a common lan-