This course will take as its overarching topic the relation of human
psychological states to the appreciation of various forms of
artworks, in particular literature, film, and music.  The three sub-
topics we will investigate are:

(i) When we interpret a work of literature, are we trying to decipher
what the author had in mind?  Or can our interpretations legitimately
pay no attention to what an author 'meant' by a particular piece of
writing as numerous recent philosophers and literary theorists have
argued)? It might seem obvious that we are trying to understand what
an author intended the meaning of a text to be -- but then it is
clear that an author cannot mean just anything he or she wants.
E.g., if we found out that Shakespeare intended Hamlet to be only an
allegory for some squabbling in his next-door neighbor's house,
couldn't we legitimately set aside the Bard's intentions and garner
our own, deeper meanings from the play?  Also, we might want to
interpret a work of literature today using ideas & concepts that were
not around yet in the author's time, for example if we are interested
in the socio-political content of the work.  Or would that be an
illegitimate use of the author's text?  Exactly what relation does
need to hold between our interpretations, and the contents of an
artist's head?  Our readings will be drawn mainly from an edited
volume of recent writings, Intention and Interpretation by Gary
Iseminger, but we'll probably have to flirt with some 'Continental'
thinkers as well.

(ii) Why do we enjoy works of art that generate unpleasant emotions?
Tragedies seem to make us sad, and horror movies seem to make us
scared, and we do not normally try to make ourselves sad or scared in
usual contexts.  Yet a great many people seem to seek out just such
stories & films. Do we perhaps not really feel sadness and fear, but
only pretend versions of those emotions?  Are we just so jaded that
we enjoy feeling any emotions whatsoever?  What other possible
explanations might we offer? These questions go back all the way to
the ancient Greeks, and even Hume had some views on the matter.  We
will mostly attend to Noel Carroll's excellent Paradoxes of the
Heart: A Philosophy of Horror, as a modern take on these issues.

(iii) We often say of pieces of music that they are expressive of
various emotions.  A certain Chopin piece might strike us as sad; the
last movement of Beethoven's Ninth as triumphant and joyous -- even
if we didn't know it was called the 'Ode to Joy'.  But what can we
mean when we say that a piece of music expresses an emotion?  Does it
have to follow that the composer had the emotion whilst composing the
piece?  Or that the performer does?  Do members of the audience need
to feel the emotion?  If so, we surely cannot require that all
hearers feel the emotion -- so how many & which ones would we
require?  Or maybe we are being completely figurative when we say
that a piece of pure music expresses an emotion, and in fact it has
nothing to do with actual human emotions at all?  This last option
seems very counter-intuitive, but some good philosophers have
defended it of late, so we'll check out their arguments.

Evaluations will consist of weekly ultrashort (less than one page)
writing assignments; a short (approximately 4 page) midterm paper;
and a longer (approximately 10 page) final paper.