The Emotional Architecture of English Literary Texts

This project develops the rich seam of inquiry opened up by my earlier research, including a pioneering monograph applying cognitive approaches to the earliest English texts. This project uses cognitive-based modes of analysis to explore how literary texts more broadly can both represent emotional disruption and trigger an emotional reaction, and will ideally take place in part at the Humanities Research Centre, ANU, if my visiting fellowship application is successful. This project will develop a unique theoretical framework to explain this affective process, and allow me to complete a monograph under consideration by OUP for their Cognition and Poetics series.