Literary atmospheres

On the potential of the concept of atmospheres in literature analysis

Abstract

This article seeks an understanding of how we as human beings emotionally relate to the places, we are situated in. The main assumption is, based on phenomenological work by Gernot Böhme and Herman Schmitz, that this emotional relation to places happens through the place’s atmosphere – the spatial part of a feeling. The article will first to some extend be a philosophical account of the term atmosphere. Hereafter this philosophical understanding of the term will be related to the reading of fiction, and some potentials for the use in this context will be discussed. Even though the term is well known and used in the reading of fiction already, Böhme and Schmitz’ phenomenological approach to atmospheres offers some new and philosophical based perspectives which can give some interesting new insights into how we read and understand some emotional aspects of a literary work, nonetheless in historical literary works.