Branches Book

BRANCHES

Dylan Vecchione

INVESTIGATING THE NEUROPSYCHOLOGICAL AFFECTIVE RESPONSES TO LITERATURE AND PROPOSING FURTHER RESEARCH FOR AN

INNOVATIVE ANALYTICAL MODEL UTILIZING DIGITAL HUMANITIES

Introduction What if the author of a book could predict the emotional response of the reader? This ability could enhance our use of language, making literature even more engaging and stimulating, and fostering a deeper connection between reader and author. This phenomenological study investigates the affective responses of literature on a reader by analyzing the effect of literary stimuli on brain activity. In other words, we are observing readers' emotional responses to literature with the goals to (1) learn more about humans' emotional interactions with literature, and (2) establish a new analytical framework that could predict emotional responses based on a book's textual elements. We seek to correlate neuropsychological responses of various pieces of literature to affective responses resulting in a suggested model (framework) to analyze for the reader’s likely affective response. Philosophers and researchers alike have investigated the affective responses to rhetorical and grammatical structures throughout history.1, 4, 8, 9, 11 Ancient Greek philosophers investigated the influence of rhetorical structures on emotion. Greek structures identified that the rhythm and sentence structure can actually influence the reader’s emotional response.5, 7 These studies are more complex in the English language, however. Modern researchers have developed the field of Digital Humanities, which attempts to quantitatively analyze literature.3 Using these analytical methods, this study seeks to suggest an analytical framework that uses Digital Humanities to analyze textual elements and predict the reader’s affective responses. In modern English, researchers investigated the affective responses to various short stories and poems, concluding that the reader exhibits four affective factors.6 Researchers developing The Affective Response to Literature Survey (ARLS) analyzed for the following factors:

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