The Encoding of Emotions in Ogawa Yōko’s Works: Sensory Narration and Mood Tableaux

Abstract

The present article investigates in what way emotions are encoded in the works of Yōko Ogawa and reveals how their potential impact on affect and feelings unfolds. It argues that emotions predominantly occur in their pre-reflective form, i.e. as affects that are expressed by sensory narration. The study demonstrates that protagonists cannot verbalize or thematize reflected forms of emotions, i.e. feelings, or they stop at the affective level, primarily at the perception of physiological reactions. Sensory narration is embedded in the fairytale-like and yet uncanny-seeming basic mood that characterizes Ogawa’s writing. This mood is largely generated by sequences that will be defined in the present article as mood tableaux. After a clarification of the issue of the quality of mood in the text and the textual encoding of emotions (both affects and feelings), text-based and empirical approaches from the field of literary studies will be incorporated in an outlook on future research on this topic. The hypothesis is that due to the sensory and affective narration style, readers subconsciously shift to an affective perception mode, which subsequently turns into a mode of perception based on feelings. This is because, in contrast to the characters, the reader cannot stop at the affective level and cognitively steps in for the protagonists, i.e. the reader  reflects on the affective during the reading process and is moved by the feelings that the protagonists lack; he or she fills the psychological void in the text. This affect-reaction model can also be applied to the works of other authors and, through its symbiosis of text-based and empirical approaches, has great potential for the affective sciences within the field of literary studies.