Emotions through Literature: Fictional Narratives, Society and the Emotional Self

215 Pages·2019·2.321 MB·English

by  Mariano Longo

“Because novels and poems name the emotions, putting them into narrative
action, literature has always been the home territory of emotion. Now, venturing
all the way across the bridge to verbal art from his own discipline of sociology,
Mariano Longo shows that a major future assignment of this crossover field will
be to specify with stronger theories how emotions are always relationships: social
between persons, changeable in historical time. First he offers a critique of the
history of sociology, where from circa 1900 to 2019 there has been a steadily
growing acceptance that emotions have a rational, historical explanation as part
of social change. Next he analyzes a broad international range of literary works
to account for the mass-emotion of crowds, the effect of envy on economics and
class-relations between the eras of Shakespeare and Trollope, and changes in love
(and theories of love) from the Middle Ages to now. Longo doesn’t come for-
ward as a literary critic, but he has many habits of attention congenial to the
works of imagination under study: he finds crucial turning-point passages to
quote, he quotes at sufficient length to exhibit style, and he brings in already-
existing literary criticism relevant to the purposes of his innovative theory. So in
this well-argued essay, packed with persuasive literary examples, Mariano Longo
significantly extends and complicates the sociology of emotions, and of research
in emotions generally.”
– Donald Wesling, Professor Emeritus of English Literature,
University of California, San Diego, USA; author of Joys and Sorrows of
Imaginary Persons (On Literary Emotions)

Emotions through Literature
Engaging with the wide sociological literature on emotions, this book explores the
social representation of emotions, their management and their effects by making
reference to creative sources. With a specific focus on literary narrative, includ-
ing the works of figures such as Dante, Austen, Manzoni, Tolstoy and Kundera,
the author draws out the capacity of literary works to describe and represent both
the external aspects of social relations and the inner motivations of the involved
actors. An interdisciplinary study that combines sociology, narratology, philoso-
phy, historical analysis and literary criticism, Emotions through Literature invites
us to re-think the role of emotions in sociological analysis, employing literary nar-
ratives to give plausible intellectual responses to the double nature of emotions,
their being both individual and social.
Mariano Longo is Full Professor of Sociology at the University of Salento,
Italy, and author of Fiction and Social Reality: Literature and Narratives as
Sociological Resources.
Classical and Contemporary Social Theory
Classical and Contemporary Social Theory publishes rigorous scholarly work that
re-discovers the relevance of social theory for contemporary times, demonstrat-
ing the enduring importance of theory for modern social issues. The series cov-
ers social theory in a broad sense, inviting contributions on both ‘classical’ and
modern theory, thus encompassing sociology, without being confined to a single
discipline. As such, work from across the social sciences is welcome, provided
that volumes address the social context of particular issues, subjects, or figures
and offer new understandings of social reality and the contribution of a theorist or
school to our understanding of it.
The series considers significant new appraisals of established thinkers or
schools, comparative works or contributions that discuss a particular social issue or
phenomenon in relation to the work of specific theorists or theoretical approaches.
Contributions are welcome that assess broad strands of thought within certain
schools or across the work of a number of thinkers, but always with an eye toward
contributing to contemporary understandings of social issues and contexts.
Series Editor
Stjepan G. Mestrovic, Texas A&M University, USA
The Unmasking Style in Social Theory
Peter Baehr
Writing the Body Politic
A John O’Neill Reader
Thomas Kemple and Mark Featherstone
Emotions through Literature
Fictional Narratives, Society and the Emotional Self
Mariano Longo
For more information about this series, please visit:
https://www.routledge.com/sociology/series/ASHSER1383
Emotions through Literature
Fictional Narratives, Society and the
Emotional Self
Mariano Longo
First published 2020
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2020 Mariano Longo
The right of Mariano Longo to be identified as author of this work has been
asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright,
Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or
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registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation
without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Longo, Mariano, author.
Title: Emotions through literature: fictional narratives, society and the
emotional self / Mariano Longo.
Other titles: Fictional narratives, society and the emotional self
Description: First edition. | Oxon, New York: Routledge, 2019. |
Series: Classical and contemporary social theory | Includes
bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2019014295 (print) | LCCN 2019018330 (ebook) |
ISBN 9780415793384 (hbk)
Subjects: LCSH: Emotions in literature. | Emotions–Social aspects. |
Self-management (Psychology) | Fiction–Social aspects. |
Fiction–History and criticism.
Classification: LCC PN56.E6 L66 2019 (print) | LCC PN56.E6 (ebook) |
DDC 809/.93353–dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019014295
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019018330
ISBN: 978-0-415-79338-4 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-315-21111-4 (ebk)
Typeset in Times New Roman
by Deanta Global Publishing Services, Chennai, India
To Michele, and his passion for the social
I would like to thank Luca Benvenga, Fabio De Nardis,
Elena Laurenzi, Lucia Mancini, Gianpasquale Preite,
Ferdinando Spina and Claudia Venuleo for their help
and competent reading.

Contents
1 By way of introduction: A sociology of emotions
through literature 1
2 Sociology and emotions: An overview 19
3 Emotions and their history: A sociological perspective 45
4 Emotions and literature 66
5 Action, emotions and emotional control: A reading of
Philip Roth’s American Pastoral 87
6 The emotional crowd 114
7 Envy, social order and social change 138
8 Of love, its semantic and its social function 162
References 187
Index 199