how should literature make us feel?

[cacian]

''a book is ready when the mind is heavy and so to pick it up should lighten the load and all fuzziness is rid''

how should literature make you feel?

[sawkid]

I think as long as it makes us feel something, it has done its job.

And you shouldn't expect literature to make you feel a certain way either, since half the fun is not knowing what you're getting yourself into when you start reading a book.

Personally, I read for the same reason suggested by your quote and if what I read can help me forget all the messy clutter in my life (even if the book turns out to be more distressing and tense) then I feel satisfied.

How do you think it should make you feel?

[cacian]

I think literature should make me feel good about myself. that is my perception of words and language.
language is our primary sense, besides the 5 or six senses, and when the words are carefully chosen the way we chose our friends, food and our clothes then the meaning is perfectly laid out to make us look and feel good. I personally do not relate to reading distressful material because it has a negative effect on me. I find it distressing to read more distressing. satisfaction is a healthy feeling and I can only relate to it that way.

[Volya]

It should just make you feel.

[cacian]

It should just make you feel.

does indifference count for anything? it is a feeling :)

[headers]

Well it should make us feel at least what actually it is meant for. It should make us feel motivated to when it is about the optimism. This is what I can say about this.

[mal4mac]

I agree it should help you 'feel good', although some literature may make you feel bad, for a moment, but increase your overall 'pleasure of understanding'. For instance, you feel bad when Anna Karenina dies, but you feel good, overall, because your understanding of human nature has been vastly increased, or at least you think it has! Reading to have bad feeling (boredom, indifference, frustration, depression...) without any chance of eventually feeling any better than you would through ruminating, or staring at a wall, is just masochism.

[Jassy Melson]

I think literature should make us realize that there is meaning in life.

[cacian]

I think literature should make us realize that there is meaning in life.

great. and which book does that best?:)

[SentimentalSlop]

I think it is less important how literature should make us feel, and more important what we should learn from that literature. People can feel all sorts of things toward a specific work or author, but that doesn't always mean their feelings are justifiable. For example, consider Shakespeare. People feel contempt for Shakespeare all the time because they misread his works, whether it be his comedies or tragedies. People always want to make it about religion, race, or sex, but they fail to actually read the words on the page. Shakespeare was far too intelligent to focus on such trivial things that are only skin deep or professed nominally. He focused on the aspects of human nature which people all across the world share, no matter their religion, race, or gender. He brings us together in the most shocking ways. Take Measure for Measure and how people often times consider Isabella the hero. She is at the end, but man, her and Angelo are so alike before she gets her act together.

[cacian]

I think it is less important how literature should make us feel, and more important what we should learn from that literature. People can feel all sorts of things toward a specific work or author, but that doesn't always mean their feelings are justifiable. For example, consider Shakespeare. People feel contempt for Shakespeare all the time because they misread his works, whether it be his comedies or tragedies. People always want to make it about religion, race, or sex, but they fail to actually read the words on the page. Shakespeare was far too intelligent to focus on such trivial things that are only skin deep or professed nominally. He focused on the aspects of human nature which people all across the world share, no matter their religion, race, or gender. He brings us together in the most shocking ways. Take Measure for Measure and how people often times consider Isabella the hero. She is at the end, but man, her and Angelo are so alike before she gets her act together.

interesting that you mention Shakespeare being the voice of the human diaspora. it is ironic because all his plays linger on tragic and are consequential of the human transcending itself. I am not sure he did a brilliant a job at telling me I must not kill or trash others.
whilst I live in a modern world Shakespeare lives in a century that I do not myself or even begin to imagine. It would have been nice to have an updated literature does not fade with time, a modern setting is most pressing, and deploy scenes from a past I do not know anything about and therefore it is very hard to connect.
a writer must gage his literature a reality that is closer enough to me ,and others before me and after ,if I am ever to enjoy and believe in it.

[SentimentalSlop]

The thing is, the plots really don't matter all that much in Shakespeare. You have to read beyond that. It's what the characters say to each other that matters. His plays deal with human sexuality, passion, reason, mercy, and justice. The politics are different, but the characters face many, if not all, the same problems we face today with our very own human nature. Shakespeare is a true psychologist and reader of human souls. The issues mentioned in his plays transcend time. In fact, I would argue many of those issues relate better to this day and age than any other between his day and ours.

[cacian]

The thing is, the plots really don't matter all that much in Shakespeare. You have to read beyond that.
his plots is what makes his writing I think. there is a certain heroic tone to them. without heroism Shakespeare would not appeal as much i think.

It's what the characters say to each other that matters.
of course:

''all the world is a stage,
and all the men and women merely players
they have their exits and their entrances
and one man in his time plays many parts''

does it strike you that the world according to Shakespeare takes first play. ie materialism.
then men and women take second rating. 'merely' here denotes people as being secondary. merely denotes unimportance. ie as if people were just people not as important as owning the world.
the other thing about these lines is that Shakespeare could well said to be sexist because he mentions men then women in this order. he could have used the word ' man' to mean both genders.

then in the last line he goes on talking about man only? there is an unaccordance of reliability here don't you think? it is almost conflicting to notice.

then in another line he mentions:
'exit' before 'entrance'. usually you enter then you exist.
it feels as thought there is a man/woman exits quicker then he/she enters.

then the last line:
and ONE MAN who plays many part. why not just and a man who plays many parts?
why only one? a world dominant one perhaps? someone who thinks the world belongs to them and so they would play as they wished as others exited before they entered?



His plays deal with human sexuality
does it? how?

, passion, reason, mercy, and justice.

these are very loaded concepts and yet tragedies have anything to do with them.


The politics are different, but the characters face many, if not all, the same problems we face today with our very own human nature.
I agree with you. what strikes me however is that all his characters seem to face dilemmas and yet death what takes it all.
I am not sure why Shakespeare felt so didactic fervent towards a need for revenge and justice when all he did was write and theatre. his life was pretty good I would say.
he does not strike me as someone who lived on the streets begging for money. his life successful yet his writing very self destructive and self fulfilling.


Shakespeare is a true psychologist and reader of human souls.
I am not so sure about that. for a writer who puts man before woman in one single line to me is not someone who understands what a human is about.


The issues mentioned in his plays transcend time. In fact, I would argue many of those issues relate better to this day and age than any other between his day and ours.
they may well do but they personally do not transcend my views on what life should be about.
there is much ado about justice and self sacrifice and there is nothing about what self is about.

[SentimentalSlop]

I can't speak for the play As You Like It, for I have never read it. But I think you are misinterpreting it. Is there a more misinterpreted author than Shakespeare? But I can tell already that those lines are full of philosophy. I do not know the characters, so I can't comment.

Sexuality? Look at Measure for Measure. That play is completely about human sexuality, mercy and justice.

And Shakespeare is not sexist, and that's coming from a woman. In fact, I think he sees men and women, equally. He has many main female characters who save the day. People always cry racism when reading Othello, sexism when reading Measure for Measure, and antisemitism when reading The Merchant of Venice. These are just a couple of examples. These plays are not about these things at all.

[Nate]

A work of literature has no further obligation than to instill interest as in a state of aesthetic arrest

[Yaur]

how should literature make you feel?
Intensely and with more than one perspective. If you can evoke intense apathy (no small feat given the ambient level of apathy) and switch to a different perspective where that apathy becomes just a shadow of the truth, then you have created something worth reading.

[cacian]

Intensely and with more than one perspective. If you can evoke intense apathy (no small feat given the ambient level of apathy) and switch to a different perspective where that apathy becomes just a shadow of the truth, then you have created something worth reading.

would you feel anything if it did not make you feel anything? if you just read something and thought nothing of it? but you did read it.

[Yaur]

would you feel anything if it did not make you feel anything? if you just read something and thought nothing of it? but you did read it. I guess there is another category, books like Brave New World that are more thought provoking than emotionally evocative. A book that lacked either an emotional our intellectual appeal I probably wouldn't finish unless it was "required reading" for some reason. Do you have a concrete example of something that falls outside of either of those that you consider worth reading?

[cacian]

I guess there is another category, books like Brave New World that are more thought provoking than emotionally evocative. A book that lacked either an emotional our intellectual appeal I probably wouldn't finish unless it was "required reading" for some reason. Do you have a concrete example of something that falls outside of either of those that you consider worth reading?

well I am just thinking I like literature that tells me something new that would apply to my everyday life.
practical things for example.
I am not into feelings sad or emotionally tearful because it does not take me anywhere but instead teach me how to sob for anything ro nothing.
literature that means to provoke or evokes feelings of distress or extreme happiness is ambivalent and drives me to distraction.
I like to maintain a neutral feeling whilst enjoying humour. I have known people who would cry out of nothing happy or sad and therefore I find it hard to tell whether they are distressed or not because they cry for anything and very quickly. or they would have burst of tempers out of the blue for nothing . again I am wondering how much of it is learned behaviour internal modification through too much reading of ambivalent literature.
I noticed a book can have emotional turmoil as well as gratification at the same time and I can never tell what would happen next when I turn the page. I find this kind of writing unsettling because I can't predict what the book is going to say or do.
I do not like unpredictability. I like to know that the book I am going to read is going to be consistant throughout.

[Yaur]

well I am just thinking I like literature that tells me something new that would apply to my everyday life.
practical things for example.
I am not into feelings sad or emotionally tearful because it does not take me anywhere but instead teach me how to sob for anything ro nothing.
literature that means to provoke or evokes feelings of distress or extreme happiness is ambivalent and drives me to distraction.
I like to maintain a neutral feeling whilst enjoying humour. I have known people who would cry out of nothing happy or sad and therefore I find it hard to tell whether they are distressed or not because they cry for anything and very quickly. or they would have burst of tempers out of the blue for nothing . again I am wondering how much of it is learned behaviour internal modification through too much reading of ambivalent literature.
I noticed a book can have emotional turmoil as well as gratification at the same time and I can never tell what would happen next when I turn the page. I find this kind of writing unsettling because I can't predict what the book is going to say or do.
I do not like unpredictability. I like to know that the book I am going to read is going to be consistant throughout.

No Nabokov or Dostoevsky I take it? Personally if it isn't literature of the thought provoking kind and there isn't some emotional hook I tend to find it rather dull and not worth the effort... Pynchon being my prime example of this. Its just different tastes, which is an interesting counterpoint to your post in that other thread to the effect that “art should be for all people”.

[Aceda]

For me I like literature to make me feel learnt morally. Novels with meanings and lessons that have a possiblity to attribute to life is one of the reasons I read books.

[cacian]

No Nabokov or Dostoevsky I take it? Personally if it isn't literature of the thought provoking kind and there isn't some emotional hook I tend to find it rather dull and not worth the effort... Pynchon being my prime example of this. Its just different tastes, which is an interesting counterpoint to your post in that other thread to the effect that “art should be for all people”.

indeed art should for all people and in order to achieve that one needs to take account everything.
I agree that a hook is need but if it is to hook it again then what is the point. If I know the hook is only going to get worse Ihave already known the turn and therefore there is no need to take it.
in other words a happy ending versus an unhappy one. these are the two consequences of a hook. and it stops there.
and then what?

[cacian]

For me I like literature to make me feel learnt morally. Novels with meanings and lessons that have a possiblity to attribute to life is one of the reasons I read books.

morality is a big meaning. which book would you attribute to the meaning of life?

Khalil Gebran is intriguing.
''if you reveal you secret to the wind
you should not blame to the wind for revealing them to the trees?''
do you know what it means?