Hey,

I don't know about a questionnaire, but how about a more objective approach? You could for example count emotionally relevant words in the poem (look for a pre-defined list) and have them also rated for emotions by different raters. You could let them rate emotional intensity, positive-negative and even let them classifiy emotions. Calculate inter-rater reliability after that. However, i understand that you might want a holistic measure too as a poem is usually more than the sum of its words.

Greetings Clemens

http://www.theemotionmachine.com/classification-of-emotions

I am currently working on "measurement" of consumers'  emotions in relation to their favorite brands. It seems quite obvious that using pictures could provide us with more insights. You could a/ either propose them some pre-defined "walls of pictures" and ask them to justify their choices or b/ let them pick some pictures they want from the Web or from magasines. With solution b, you will have to conduct a content analysis of the chosen pictures. If you are interested by that kind of methodological approaches, I may send you one of my current working papers on the topic. Best regards from France.

Do you want to measure the emotions in the poems or the emotions in the people reading the poems?

And what is your research question?

That said, I think that this is really interesting research – please tell us more!

Dear Sugunadevi and Donán Michael!

Can I express my doubt whether either the emotions in the poems or the emotions of the readers of the poems could be objectively quantified. The first is problematic, because you do not have direct access to them, even if you knew what exactly to be understood by the emotion IN the poem. As for the second question, are you interested in the emotions raised in the particular reader in a particular moment, or "in general". The first seems to me too random, determined by mere chance, the second too general, requiring a large pool of particular readers' particular moments of reading. And even then it would only mean something if you have the same mesaurement scale for other poems as well.

ANd, by the way, how exactly to "measure" emotions, except for the physical qualities of the brain, which is quite an external approach.

But of course, the question is brave - this is, perhaps, why it provoked my answer. 

Best,

Ferenc

Seriously, what is going on when truly bizarre stuff like this keeps turning up? Have the pseudo intellectuals really taken over literature departments, world wide?

Firstly, Ms Veeran, it's all about the reader, the listener, and what they may or may not experience. If no one at the other end experiences A or B or C, then that's the end of things, unless you're in some educational institution where you have to accept and regurgitate, in order to pass, or get a distinction, or PhD or whatever. So, practically speaking, there is no actual, real way of measuring the alleged 'emotional content' of a poem.  It's a personal matter Ms Veeran, unless of course you are doing one of the aforementioned study programs.  But, how something like poetry has devolved to this pseudo intellectual pseudo science level would make an interesting thesis topic.  If you want to use a Market Research tool to measure 'emotional content' in poems, the best thing is to ask someone in MR. I'm sure they'll show you the true way to fix things, which is what MR is all about, giving the client what they want.  Mark 

Emotion is based on individuals. What arouses your emotion  may not do so with me.Let us know your selected poet and poems.

You  are doing research on poems or readers.please tell me first.poem is spontaneous flow of  poets powerful feelings.Reader can answer those questions you can put them but inner feelings of poet is no match.

Poetry is very rarely the spontaneous outpouring of emotions.  Generally someone writes a poem, or some lines, then has a think about them, a re-reading.  Then they try to improve the effect, often having their changes, and ideas of changes, read and reflected on by others. Sometimes this takes a long time. Poetry is not necessarily emotional.  Quite often it can be 'intellectual' or humorous or cynical, or tell a story... It is a means of expression, neither more nor less, though in a particular format. 

Mark 

How is this project going? I am very curious, as a person who reads a lot of poetry and writes some. One thing that struck me was that the emotions in poems are complex things. Look at Zawe Ashtonin a stunning reading of Shakespeare – how do you begin to define the parade of emotions, and the desolate conclusion? There are conflicting messages – her sympathetic depiction of people juxtaposes with her apartness, cleverly underlined by the camerawork. So the soliloquy, which seems to be about other people ends up also showing a woman alone with a clear vision of the span of life and its chilling end, set apart by this knowledge from everyone else around her.

How do you begin to name and analyse those emotions??

https://youtu.be/LXZhASNTKt4