Energetic Space: The Affect of Literature in a Composition Classroom

Abstract

Rhetorical and critical theory have both prescribed and proscribed the way scholars view affect. With the exception of Reader Response Theory, literary and rhetorical theory tend to use a more long-term and permanent frame of reference when addressing the emotional relationship between reader and writer. This disquisition explores a framework where the reader and writer find emotional connection in particular and emergent times and spaces. This work extends the import of Kairos, as a rhetorical figure and theory, to contemporary research and theories like Maria Takolander’s “Energetic Space” and Louise Rosenblatt’s “Aesthetic Reading,” theories that link writer to reader. Rather than returning to the stagnating debate regarding the societal import of literature and its inclusion in or exclusion from university course curriculum, this work will use grounded theory to qualitatively examine students’ affective responses to a novel over a period of 4 years to describe how the emotional relationship between an author and audience can be located and marked in the transformative moment.