DEFINING EMOTIONS AND NARRATIVE

Keith Oatley and Philip Johnson-Laird have argued persuasively that emotion is the product of an agent's evaluations of his/her success or failure in achieving particular goals within what is, in effect, a narrative structure. In connection with this, they argue that there are five “basic” emotions: happiness, sadness, fear, anger, and disgust. In part, Oatley and Johnson-Laird are drawing on the research of Paul Ekman, who has demonstrated that the facial expressions for these emotions are universal, as are the expressions for surprise and “interest.” Ekman has maintained that all seven represent basic emotions. Oatley and Johnson-Laird delete surprise and interest from Ekman's list on the grounds that they are not genuine emotions. Surprise appears to be a mode of experiencing other emotions (Oatley 60). For example, surprise is what makes fear into fright; in this case, it is a mode of experiencing fear.

Anyone who approaches the theories of Ekman, Oatley, and Johnson-Laird with a knowledge of classical Sanskrit dramatic theory is likely to be struck by the remarkable similarity between these modern developments of biological and cognitive science, on the one hand, and the ancient Indic ideas about narrative and emotion, presented in the Nāṭyaśāstra and elsewhere over two millennia earlier. The Nāṭyaśāstra distinguishes eight “permanently dominant” emotions or bhāvas. The list includes mirth, sorrow, fear, anger, and disgust, the five basic emotions of Oatley/Johnson-Laird. It also includes astonishment or wonder.