Affective Literature as an Inclusive Art Form

Abstract

Affective Literature as an Inclusive Art Form JUDE AIGBE AGHO Abstract In this essay, I am largely concerned with the propensity of literature to affect the psychology of readers because of the emotion that it embeds, and I argue that literature generally is affective since it is constructed to entertain, teach, and provide pleasures to the reader. It can only achieve this meaningfully if it embeds emotions that can make the readers respond in diverse ways to express how they are affected: through anger, grief, laughter, joy, sorrow etc. It is the capacity of a literary work to generate these emotions that underlines its significance and ultimate success. New Criticism, Formalism and the later poststructuralist and postmodernist approaches to criticism censure in varying degrees contentual signification and put their stresses on the formal profundities in a text such as language and the figurative dimension of language, the apt and adroit depiction of setting, characters, and narrative techniques as ways of conveying signification, but emotions are best represented and felt through the content and message that a literary work conveys. An aesthetically flawed literary work is one that fails to fulfill the basic functions of literature through entertaining and pleasuring the readers. The capacity of literature to be affective inheres in its ability to conventionally function as explained above. Every successful literary work must in essence be affective and this underlines the inclusivity of the term as it relates to African literature. Keywords: affect, affective, literature, African literature