Abstract

This dissertation examines our emotional responses to works of fictional literature. It begins with the examination of a puzzle concerning our ability to have cognitive-type emotions, such as pity, for fictional characters. Cognitive emotions require the holding of certain beliefs regarding their intentional objects, beliefs that seem lacking in the case of fictional characters. And yet we are able to feet certain cognitive emotions towards fictional entities. The solution that is posed and examined is the "suspension of disbelief"; I argue that in order to feel emotions for fictional characters, it is sufficient that we have beliefs regarding these characters as fictional entities. Our beliefs that these characters are merely fictional, and hence "unworthy" of emotional attention, are suspended, quarantined from interacting with our fictive beliefs, and hence not undermining them. ;I also argue that, apart from the common-and-garden variety emotions that we feel towards fictional characters, fictional works elicit a range of emotional responses not usually felt in everyday life. I examine one such type of "aesthetic emotional" response---that of "sweet-sorrow"---and I attempt to explain its origins. ;In the following chapter, I examine the emotion of "tragic pity". I look at some explanations of this seemingly paradoxical emotion, and then propose an explanation of my one. My explanation is directed towards the psychological state of mind of the reader or audience of a tragedy. ;The final chapter looks at the formal qualities of a literary text; I argue that works of art elicit certain emotional responses by creating a concordance between our emotional and psychological structures, and the formal structure of the text. I argue that a literary work is able to create certain emotional responses not only by presenting a set of circumstances to us, but in virtue of the formal presentation of these circumstances in a particular way