Mood and Trope:g The Rhetoric and Poetics of Affect

In Mood and Trope, John Brenkman introduces two provocative propositions to affect theory: that human emotion is intimately connected to persuasion and figurative language; and that literature, especially poetry, lends precision to studying affect because it resides there not in speaking about feelings, but in the way of speaking itself. Engaging a quartet of modern philosophers-Kant, Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Deleuze-Brenkman explores how they all approach the question of affect primarily through literature and art. He draws on the differences and dialogues among them, arguing that the vocation of criticism is incapable of systematicity and instead must be attuned to the singularity and plurality of literary and artistic creations. In addition, he confronts these four philosophers and their essential concepts with a wide array of authors and artists, including Pinter and Poe, Baudelaire, Jorie Graham and Li-Young Lee, Shakespeare, Tino Sehgal, and Francis Bacon. Filled with surprising insights, Mood and Trope provides a rich archive for rethinking the nature of affect and its aesthetic and rhetorical stakes. Additional ISBNs022667326X, 9780226673264Mood and Trope: The Rhetoric and Poetics of Affect is written by John Brenkman and published by University of Chicago Press. ISBNs for Mood and Trope are 9780226673431, 022667343X and the print ISBNs are 9780226673127, 022667312X. Additional ISBNs include 022667326X, 9780226673264.