ABSTRACT

Chapter 5 examines how pictures of human forms arouse emotion, a phenomenon analyzed in the Enlightenment by Gottfried Lessing’s critique of the classical sculpture Laocoön and informed by Edmund Burke’s treatise on the sublime and the beautiful. Aristotle, George Campbell, and modern rhetoricians have defined how emotional appeals can be created with vivid description and close temporal and spatial proximity with an audience. Practical pictures have long used human forms to elicit emotions ranging from confidence, equanimity, and empathy to fear and distress, especially with grotesque figures that appear in workplace warnings. Annual reports and solicitations for charities also use human forms in emotional appeals intended to engage and persuade audiences.