ABSTRACT

Mood is a phenomenon whose study is inherently interdisciplinary. While it has remained resistant to theorisation, it nonetheless has a substantial influence on art, politics and society. Since its practical omnipresence in every-day life renders it one of the most significant aspects of affect studies, it has garnered an increasing amount of critical attention in a number of disciplines across the humanities, sciences and social sciences in the past two decades. Mood: Interdisciplinary Perspectives, New Theories provides a comprehensive theoretical and empirical exploration of the phenomenon of mood from an interdisciplinary angle. Building on cutting-edge research in this emerging field and bringing together established and new voices, it bridges the existing disciplinary gap in the study of mood and further consolidates this phenomenon as a crucial concept in disciplinary and interdisciplinary study. By combining perspectives and concepts from the literary studies, philosophy, musicology, the social sciences, artistic practice and psychology, the volume does the complexity and richness of mood-related phenomena justice and benefits from the latent connections and synergies in different disciplinary approaches to the study of mood.

chapter |21 pages

Introduction

chapter 1|13 pages

Changing Moods

chapter 2|18 pages

The Composition of a Mood

chapter 4|17 pages

Against the Grain

Heidegger and Musical Attunement

chapter 7|15 pages

Translating Moods

Proust’s ‘Awkwardness’

chapter 8|23 pages

‘He wept for a way home’

The Stimmung of Odysseus’s Nostos

chapter 9|19 pages

Altering the Mood

Boredom and Anaesthesia in Itchy Park

chapter 10|20 pages

Registering the Charge

Mood and Lawrence Durrell’s The Alexandria Quartet

chapter 11|17 pages

Of Mood

A Sonic Repertoire