Scientific Study of Literature - Volume 3, Issue 2, 2013

A survey study was conducted to explore why people read about suffering, giving particular attention to the role that catharsis may play. Through an online questionnaire, respondents (N = 67) commented on a popular autobiographical Dutch novel about grief. The questionnaire contained closed and open questions, addressing motives for reading and thoughts and feelings while reading. Results indicated that curiosity about content, style and the author, fueled by media-attention and the author’s status, were the most important motives for reading the novel. Respondents who had experienced a significant loss themselves demonstrated a need for recognition and support. Responses further suggested that “clarification” (gaining deep insight) is a better explanation for the attraction of tragic narrative than “purgation.” Clarification did not appear to be related to fear, and the role of empathic emotions appeared questionable. Cluster analysis did identify a potential “catharsis group,” which combined fear, pity and appreciation for the articulation of grief.

In this paper, I discuss claims according to which literary reading may initiate a form of reflection that leads to “a shift in understanding” (e.g., Miall, 2006, p. 145). I focus particularly on reflection on one’s own finitude and draw on phenomenology to distinguish between two current models of “shifts in understanding” through reading literature: one involves shifts in abstract beliefs and the other involves shifts in embodied and experiential understandings. I argue that for some readers the engagement with literary texts not only moves them from the denial of death to the understanding of their own finitude, but that it also affords them an embodied experience of this finitude, as opposed to an abstract acknowledgement of it. I begin by describing the difference between knowing about one’s death and the experience of one’s finitude. I then present a phenomenological alternative to current suggestions for how literary texts may initiate “a shift in understanding.” Finally, I present a series of empirical studies that investigate readers’ engagements with texts dealing with human finitude.

Two studies of literary reading described the effects of loss, trauma, and traumatic loss on moments of disclosure during expressive engagement with the text. Study 1 compared readers who had experienced recent loss, recent trauma or neither recent loss nor trauma. Study 2 extended this paradigm to include traumatic loss. Dependent variables included an index of sublime disquietude, specifically, the interactive combination of perceived discord, self-perceptual depth, and inexpressible realizations. Across both studies, (1) a combination of traumatic distress and separation distress predicted sublime disquietude; (2) dissociation (depersonalization, amnesia) predicted sublime disquietude; and (3) distress in response to loss, trauma, or traumatic loss motivated reading at the limits of expressibility. This pattern of results is described in relation to Heidegger’s (1962) characterization of how, within being-toward-death, an uncanny not-at-homeness (Unheimlichkeit) is the context within which an experiential process provides an unsettling and yet elevating disclosure of finitude.

Media psychologists have found no empirical support for catharsis as emotional venting or purgation. However, the concept persists in the humanities and everyday use, particularly in beliefs about the presumed effects of catharsis on well-being. This study adjusts the conceptualization of catharsis to include a cognitive aspect, i.e., the clarification of emotion, and examines the health outcomes of the combination of exposure to drama and drama-induced self-reflection. An experiment (N = 152) was conducted to compare the therapeutic effects of cinematic and reading-based dramas. In a mediation analysis, improvements in general health and lowered levels of depression were found for cinematic drama exposure with self-reflection, compared to reading-based drama exposure with self-reflection; this relationship was mediated by identification and emotional self-efficacy. Our results provide preliminary evidence for the therapeutic benefits of cinematic human drama through an altered conception of catharsis. Implications for using media to facilitate emotional fitness and meaningful entertainment are discussed.

We provide a review of the literature concerning aesthetic engagement (especially with literature and film) during times of distress. The objective is to offer a conceptual framework for this fledging research area and to provide a context for several manuscripts on this topic included in a Special Issue of Scientific Study of Literature (Volume 3, Issue 2). Particular attention is given to processes that arguably are distinctively aesthetic, including (1) the role of prosodic/semantic structures in the generation of local aesthetic objects within a longer narrative; (2) the identification of an affective theme through reflective consideration of a series of separate — but resonant — local aesthetic objects; and (3) the consequent emergence of poignantly bivalent feelings tinged with loss. This framework invites reconsideration of the Aristotelian conception of catharsis (understood as clarification rather than purgation), as well as examination of how poignant aesthetic engagement invites revaluation of personal priorities during moments of vulnerability.