I'M SUPER SERIAL!!!

I've been reading a book on music and emotion for a class I'm in this semester of the same name. A lot of the book is a survey on the philosophical and cognitive work done on emotion and expression up to today. The author often explains others' theories by creating examples from everyday situations. Often, however, her examples make me think that she is secretly a very dry and hilarious BBC sitcom writer (she's British, as you might be able to tell by the syntax of the sentences below) famous for her deadpan non sequiturs. Thus, I give you my favorite sentences from Jenefer Robinson's Deeper than Reason: Emotion and its Role in Literature, Music, and Art:

p. 18 Adult sexual love is directed at a desirable person (or perhaps we should say a person-like creature, since, according to novelist Marian Engel, it is possible to fall in love with a bear)....Indeed I do not think I have ever been in love with a proposition (or a bear, for that matter).

p. 86: When I am distraught about my husband's abandoning me, I do not know exactly what emotions I am experiencing.

p. 98: [The judgement theorists] may make accurate generalizations about when it is correct to say that I am 'afraid that it will rain' or 'regretful about your lost garlic press.'

p. 253: We talk about sad news, a sad business ('It was a sad business about Nora's abortion'), a sad day ('It was a sad day for America when Kennedy was assassinated'), a sad letter, a sad face, a sad song, a sad time, sad weather, a sad attempt at a joke, and so on and so forth.

There was another sentence about shivering because the mayor dropped an ice cube down my shirt, but I can't find it. I swear I read it in this book.

1 Response to "I'M SUPER SERIAL!!!"

  1. JW Says:

    Thanks for sharing. These are interesting! You'll have to update about the ice down the shirt if you figure it out. :)

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