How to Feel Wonderment: Ritual Frameworks for Developing Emotional Intention Regarding the Rasa Adbhuta

Abstract

Emotional intention, how can one access or martial their feelings at will? This paper will examine feeling, namely wonderment, how it has been accessed, and how it has been regulated according to three ritual philosophies of performance (each selected for their commitment to verisimilitude): Sanskrit Rasa-Aesthetics, Chinese Ritual theories espoused by Confucius, Mencius, and Xunzi, as well as Stella Adler’s post- Stanislavskian performative imagination technique. Existing empirical discussion on Emotional Regulation isolates emotions from their regulation processes. This work will specifically address one emotion alongside the practices for manipulating that emotion, avoiding the pitfall of disassociating the feeling from the process. Previous discourse reduces the concept of emotional agency to self-restraint. This work will identify and examine discrete practices for both sides of the emotional agency spectrum— both regulation and strategic access. Finding primary practices for accessing and controlling “wonderment” using elements from each of the three philosophies, these practices will be applied to a sample performance text, both in isolation and in concert with one another. By applying these diverse practices to the same text, this thesis aims to find points of overlap, offering a multifaceted addition to the existing conversation on emotional agency.