Affective Ecologies of Modernism: A Theory for Literary Climate Reading

Thesis Abstract

This study investigates how affective ecologies shape modernist literary climate reading, addressing the gap in understanding how emotional networks, atmospheric causality, and environmental sensibilities influence interpretation and aesthetic value in early to mid-twentieth-century English-language modernist texts. The problem centers on the tendency in modernist criticism to treat climate and atmosphere as backdrop rather than as active, structuring forces in literary meaning-making, which obscures how readers and texts negotiate affective intensities within specific bioclimatic contexts. The aim is to develop a theory of Literary Climate Reading (LCR) that articulates how affective ecologies—comprising material environments, social atmospheres, and emotive networks—mediate perception, interpretation, and value judgements in modernist prose and poetry. Specific objectives are (1) to operationalize the concept of affective ecology in literary analysis by identifying variables—ecological affordances, atmospheric intensity, and affective valence—relevant to modernist texts; (2) to construct an analytic framework integrating psychological, ecocritical, and narratological perspectives; (3) to test the framework across a curated corpus representing diverse geographies and biomes within modernist discourse; (4) to examine how climate-mediated affect informs readerly responses, canonicality, and interpretive authority; and (5) to articulate a refined methodology for integrating climate-derived affect into literary critique. The methodology adopts a mixed-methods design that triangulates qualitative and quantitative approaches. The study uses a purposive corpus of 18 modernist works (novels and lyric poetry) from authors including Virginia Woolf, James Joyce, D. H. Lawrence, Virginia Woolf, and T. S. Eliot, selected for explicit climate or atmospheric undercurrents and for documented bioclimatic contexts. Data collection comprises (a) close-content analysis to code textual instances of atmosphere, weather, and affective cues using a predefined coding schema; (b) reader-response interviews with 40 postgraduate literature students and early-career scholars to capture interpretive affect and climate perception; and (c) clausal sentiment-laden scene tagging to quantify affective valence and arousal. Analytical techniques include thematic analysis (Braun and Clarke) to identify latent patterns in textual and interview data, regression analysis to examine correlations between climate descriptors and interpretive outcomes, and content analysis to map climate-interpretation linkages across the corpus. Additionally, a structural equation model will be estimated to test the proposed affective-ecology variables as predictors of perceived climate-readings and perceived authorial authority. The study also draws on theories of phenomenology (Merleau-Ponty) to ground embodied encounter with climate, ecocriticism (Foster, Morton) to frame ecological critique, and modernist narratology (Bakhtin, Genette) to elucidate narrative agency under atmospheric constraints. A thematic synthesis will produce a cohesive framework for Literary Climate Reading (LCR). Anticipated findings include (i) a demonstrable association between elevated atmospheric intensity and heightened readerly affect, leading to intensified interpretive ambiguity; (ii) evidence that climate descriptors function as interpretive lenses shaping moral and aesthetic judgments; (iii) identification of distinct reader vestiges of climate in modernist form (stream-of-consciousness, fragmented narration) as mediators of climate-induced affect; and (iv) validation of LCR as a transferable framework capable of recontextualizing canonical readings and revealing underexplored bioclimatic subtexts. The study contributes to knowledge by formalizing a theoretical model that foregrounds affective ecologies as constitutive elements of literary meaning in modernism, integrating ecological psychology with narratology and ecocriticism, and offering a replicable analytic toolkit for climate-centered literary analysis. It also extends methodological rigor in literary studies through the combination of qualitative coding, sentiment analysis, and structural equation modeling, demonstrating the viability of interdisciplinary methods for humanities research. The main conclusion is that affective ecologies are not peripheral but constitutive of modernist climate-reading practices, and they recalibrate how readers interpret form, mood, and meaning. Recommendations include applying the LCR framework to broader modernist corpora and postcolonial modernist continuums, developing digital humanities tools for climate-annotated textual analysis, and refining pedagogy to foreground environmental affect in literary education.