ABSTRACT
In our journey so far, we have looked at LRI, mood and location, all of which are primarily non-textual phenomena. It is now time to focus more on the text itself and in particular on literary themes and their affective nature. We might start by posing the question, how important are literary themes to the process of meaning making? Themes such as (i) childhood, (ii) primary caregivers (i.e. the mother), (iii) the home, and (iv) death. We might also ask about the affective nature of other, less obvious, literary themes, such as (v) a sense of nostalgia / a feeling of distance, and (vi) the notion of incommunicability. We might even pose a far more challenging question, namely, are such themes always triggered from the page, bottom-up, while reading, or can they also come from the mind in a top-down fashion? Before addressing these questions, let us start with a story, and perhaps unexpectedly, a non-fi ctive one.
