Illustration: Colourbox
Literature, in many respects, draws on the particular in its linguistic and cultural embeddedness while, at the same time, it is thought to evoke the «big» emotions that all people share. Research connected to this trajectory investigates these tensions, as well as the relations between emotion, affect, mood and feeling as states of emotional involvedness.
Olivia Da Costa Fialho in her project develops the phenomenology, preconditions and underlying processes of how literary narrative fiction deepens and changes perceptions of self and others.
We say that literature can change your life. But is this statement supported by scientific evidence?
Camilla Chams approaches attachment as a synonym for love, liking, affiliation. Attachment has recently been launched as a keyword for the humanities and for literary studies (Felski, 2008, 2015). In psychology, however, attachment is a more complex form of human relationship involving both cognitive and emotional development, and physical survival (Bowlby, 1979).
Camilla Chams, Francisco Pons and Karine P. Viana draw on developmental psychology and cognitive literary studies and investigate the mother-child attachment relationship in novels by Hanne Ørstavik and Elena Ferrante.