ABSTRACT
Authors write for readers—first of all, readers they tacitly imagine or simulate, but ultimately with the hope of reaching actual readers as well. The implied reader is in many respects more akin to what the ancient Sanskrit aestheticians called the "sahrdaya". The implied reader is related to the real reader in a manner parallel to the way the implied author is related to the real author. This chapter concentrates primarily on implied readers. This may seem a peculiar choice, since clearly it is real readers who feel such ordinary emotions as mirth, sorrow, or anger. The psychologist and film theorist Ed Tan has drawn an influential distinction between fiction emotions and artifact emotions. Mirth is, therefore, a particularly appropriate topic for the treatment of literary emotion. Social norms are disseminated through beauty, suspense, attachment feelings, anger, fear—indeed, every emotion and associated discourse.
