ABSTRACT
The chapter offers a sympathetic reappraisal of the 1949 essay by William Wimsatt and Monroe Beardsley, titled The Affective Fallacy. The chapter argues that we need to question the nature and role of emotions in responses to works of literature not because such emotions are necessarily inappropriate nor because of any paradox of fiction but because we need to ask what the emotions are directed to (or where they stem from) and how they play into judgements we make about literature. Following Wimsatt and Beardsley, emphasis is given to the need for specificity in emotional responses and the importance of objectivity in critical judgements. Are there good reasons for the emotions or are they just the product of causes? The primary focus is on empathetic responses, distinguishing empathy expressed in a text and empathy felt in a reader, with priority given to the former in objective criticism. The point is elaborated using further distinctions: between internal and external perspectives on fictional characters; between subject-content and thematic-content in works of literature; and between kinds of readers, professional critics and “ordinary” readers (seen as roles rather than classes of people), noting the different place for emotions in their critical responses.
