Experiencing Art: The Paradox of Positive and Negative Emotions

Chesnokova, Anna and van Peer, Willie (2025) Experiencing Art: The Paradox of Positive and Negative Emotions Колективна (три і більше авторів). Springer, Cham.

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Abstract

Positive Psychology points out the necessity of transforming stressful, disturbing or negative emotions into meaningful and rewarding experiences. However, such transformation of painful events, suffering, or grief, does not come naturally to most people. This chapter considers one cultural resource helpful in building such personal growth in emotions: the arts. Indeed, the arts (especially literature, music, and theatre) have a significant cop-ing potential. We should distinguish between emotions evoked by it and emotions we experience ourselves as readers/listeners/spectators. One would expect some congruency between the two, so that sad poems would make readers sad, and jol-ly poems would make them delighted. But that turns out not to be the case. In many instances we actually enjoy sadness in art. Hence undergoing the sad emo-tions in art are in fact, we argue, exercises in transforming pain into pleasure, thereby contributing to the regulation and enhancement of one’s emotional equi-librium. We will demonstrate such processes in a reading / listening experiment, showing how literary and musical devices inspire listeners to overcome the negative con-tent of the song. To this end, we compared the emotional reactions of participants to a song by the Portuguese fado singer, Mariza, with and without the text and its translation. Results reveal the paradox of turning negative emotions (of the sing-er) into positive emotions of the spectators. The chapter argues that the cumula-tive effect of such experiences supplies the individual, but also social groups, with both emotional comfort and strength.

Item Type:	Monograph (Колективна (три і більше авторів))
Uncontrolled Keywords:	Emotion research; Positive psychology; Transforming negative emotions; Emo-tional paradox; Coping; Cultural resources; Learning about emotions; Literature and music as resources
Subjects:	Монографії > Видані в іноземному видавництві мовами ОЕСР/ЄС
Divisions:	Факультет романо-германської філології > Кафедра лінгвістики та перекладу
Depositing User:	Анна Вадимовна Чеснокова
Date Deposited:	20 Jun 2025 07:50
Last Modified:	20 Jun 2025 07:50
URI:	https://elibrary.kubg.edu.ua/id/eprint/52137

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