piThe Routledge Companion to Literature and Emotion ishows how the affective turn in the humanities applies to literary studies. Deftly combining the scientific elements with the literary, the book provides a theoretical and topical introduction to reading literature and emotion.ppLooking at a variety of formats, including novels, drama, film, graphic fiction, and lyric poetry, the book also includes focus on specific authors such as Shakespeare, Chaucer, Jane Austen, Virginia Woolf, and Viet Thanh Nguyen. The volume introduces the theoretical groundwork, covering such categories as affect theory, affective neuroscience, cognitive science, evolution, and history of emotions. It examines the range of emotions that play a special role in literature, including happiness, fear, aesthetic delight, empathy, and sympathy, as well as aspects of literature style, narrative voice, and others that bear on emotional response. Finally, it explores ethical and political concerns that are often inter