The Emotional Map of Literature (Book)

Edebiyatın Duygu Haritası (The Emotional Map of Literature) is a study by Esra Dicle that examines the concept of emotion in the context of literature from an interdisciplinary perspective. Published in November 2022 as part of Dergâh Yayınları’s Turkish Literature – Study series, the work is 372 pages long.

Content and Structure

The book analyzes the relationships that emotion studies establish with fields such as philosophy, sociology, anthropology, history, ecology, gender, and economics, using literary texts as its basis. It offers a broad selection that extends from early Ottoman literature to contemporary texts. In the chapters, which include genres like mesnevi, theater, novels, poetry, short stories, and autobiography, the interaction of emotions with political discourse, ecological thought, self-construction, and gender norms is examined.

Themes and Approach

• The Collective Aspect of Emotion: Beyond individually experienced emotions, the question of how emotions are produced and circulated in historical and cultural contexts is addressed.
• Emotion and Social Structure: The function of emotions in the processes of modernity, capitalism, and the construction of collective identity is explored.
• Literature and Emotional Language: The ways in which emotional expressions in texts guide and politicize the reader are revealed in detail.
• Interdisciplinary Reading: Attention is drawn to the metaphorical and conceptual functions of emotion in fields such as ecology, gender, politics, and individual-society relations.

Narration and Style

Dicle uses clearly outlined chapters in her academically rigorous texts. Examples from literary texts are carefully selected to support the analyses, which are in turn grounded in theoretical references. The language is structured with a clarity that facilitates the reader's intellectual and emotional engagement with the subject.