Kenosis, katharsis, kairosis: a theory of literary affects

This thesis explores theoretical aspects of the affective dimension of literature. Beginning with Aristotle's tying of katharsis to the drama, the pattern of affective relations is completed through the establishing of terms for each of the three broad traditional genres. These relations can be expressed in the ratio: as katharsis is to the genre of the dramatic, so kenosis is to the genre of the lyric, so kairosis is to the genre of the epic. Within each of these affective relations, further relations are determined for the identity structures within each genre. In defining these identity structures, the philosophical, theological, psychological and literary aspects of katharsis, kenosis and kairosis are explored. Of particular use in mapping these identity structures and literary affects were the philosophical theories of Aristotle, Kant, Hegel, Heidegger, Sartre, and Wittgenstein; the theological views of D.G. Dawe, John Macquarrie, Charles Pickstone, and Ernest F. Scott; the psychological theories of C.J. Jung, Jacques Lacan and Julia Kristeva; the literary theories of Mikel Dufrenne, Stanley Fish, Toshihiko and Toyo Izutsu, Hans Robert Jauss, W.R. Johnson, Frank Kermode, William Elford Rogers, and D.T. Suzuki; and the literary works of Homer, Shakespeare, George Herbert, S.T. Coleridge, Charles Baudelaire, Wallace Stevens, and James K. Baxter. Taking up Aristotle's project to grant cognitive value to the experience of art, this thesis argues for the centrality of identity structures within the dimension of the affective. The thesis further determines that literature's affective dimension is the domain within which aesthetic identity is established. Such imaginative identity structures amount to a cultural catalogue of identity possibilities. As the keepers of this catalogue, the three interpretive genres amount to a body of affective knowledge that is its own dimension.