Art and Emotion

Matravers examines how emotions form the bridge between our experience of art and of life. We often find that a particular poem, painting, or piece of music carries an emotional charge; and we may experience emotions toward, or on behalf of, a particular fictional character. Matravers shows that what these experiences have in common, and what links them to the expression of emotion in non-artistic cases, is the role played by feeling. He carries out a critical survey of various accounts of the nature of fiction, attacks contemporary cognitivist accounts of expression, and offers an uncompromising defense of a controversial view about musical expression: that music works by expressing the emotions it causes its listeners to feel.