In print. To appear in: Patrick Colm Hogan, Bradley J. Irish, and Lalita Pandit Hogan, ed. The Routledge Companion to Literature and Emotion. London: Routledge 2021. AESTHETIC EMOTIONS Sibylle Baumbach https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2616-9077 Abstract: Not all emotions experienced in the encounter with literature are ‘aesthetic’. As suggested by the seeming paradox inherent in the term ‘aesthetic emotions’, the latter embraces reactive and reflective responses, combining emotional and cognitive processes in the appreciation of a literary text, and includes some conceptual tension. Following a brief survey of recent research in the field, this chapter explores fascination as aesthetic emotion, proposing that the latter can be conceived as mixed emotions which push our emotional repertoire to its limits, create instances of emotional and cognitive disorientation, and prompt temporary in/securities of attachment which ultimately contribute to the pleasure arising from coping with these complex emotions in the process of reading. It further suggests that due to its focus on mixed emotions and the sublime, the Gothic genre in particular affords aesthetic emotions. Keywords: aesthetic emotions, fascination, Gothic fiction, sublime, attachment-detachment Approaching Aesthetic Emotions: Coming to Terms with a Paradox Considering that our classification systems are binary in nature, the simplest way to define aesthetic emotions would be to oppose them to ‘non-aesthetic’ emotions. As such, they would denote emotions that are aesthetically generated, meaning that they emerge in the appreciation of aesthetic objects or textures, including artworks, design objects, literary texts, or music. With recourse to Immanuel Kant’s concept of ‘disinterested pleasure’, aesthetic emotions might be further specified as a non-utilitarian sensual pleasure felt particularly in the experience of beauty, including beauty in nature. One might also conceive of ‘aesthetic emotions’ as the opposite of ‘ethical’ or ‘moral’ emotions, connecting to the key principle of Aestheticism, l’art pour l’art, which aims at uncoupling the appreciation of beauty from any moral considerations, as propagated, for instance, in Joris-Karl Huysman’s novel À Rebours (1884) or the writings of Oscar Wilde. Further, ‘aesthetic’ emotions might be juxtaposed to ‘real’ emotions, in that they are imagined, even irrational. There are several limitations to these binary classifications. First, they lack precision: ‘Aesthetic emotions’ in the sense outlined above seems to be interchangeable with ‘aesthetic