“To You it’s Just Words”: David Foster Wallace’s Fiction and Affect Theory

Affect is an underlying thread in David Foster Wallace studies; discussions of sincerity, irony and empathy implicitly assume that affect exists in Wallace’s writing as a key concern. However, affect itself has remained largely untheorised, with critics usually dissolving explorations of affect into these frameworks. In contrast, this thesis sets out to explore Wallace’s fiction through the lens of affect theory. Rather than discussing affect in a general way, it focuses on specific affects. Each of the chapters traces an individual affect across one of Wallace’s fictional works.