Chapter Two: Tomkins and Literature: A Hermeneutical Model
Chapter Three: Tragedy and the Trope of Disgust
Part Two: Application
Chapter Four: Case Study One: Sophocles’ Oedipus
Chapter Five: Case Study Two: Shakespeare’s Hamlet
Chapter Six: Case Study Three: Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman
Chapter Seven: Conclusion: Dreams We Learn
Duncan A. Lucas is Professor of Communications in the Department of Liberal Studies at Mohawk College in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada.
Affect Theory, Genre, and the Example of Tragedy employs Silvan Tomkins’ Affect-Script theory of human psychology to explore the largely unacknowledged emotions of disgust and shame in tragedy. The book begins with an overview of Tomkins’ relationship to both traditional psychoanalysis and theories of human motivation and emotion, before considering tragedy via case studies of Oedipus, Hamlet, and Death of a Salesman. Aligning Affect-Script theory with literary genre studies, this text explores what motivates fictional characters within the closed conditions of their imagined worlds and how we as an audience relate to and understand fictional characters as motivated humans.