ABSTRACT
In this chapter we will focus on two pre-reading, mind-fed, affective cognitive factors called “mood” and “location”. The fi rst pertains to all of the, as yet, unfocused thinking that takes place once a person “decides” to read literature. The second concerns the place in which a person chooses to position his or her body in anticipation of the literary reading experience: this is usually the fi nal stage of the pre-reading situation just prior to the hands opening the book and the eyes meeting the page. Both mood and location have been largely neglected in previous analytic accounts of literary discourse processing. They should be properly explored because their role in literary meaning construction can be crucial. The addition and proper consideration of two such factors will enhance the range and depth of contextualised stylistic analysis and will better validate the claims of empirical scholars of literature. Let us fi rst look at mood.
