710 The Role of Emotions in Reading Literary Texts: Fact or Fiction? Katayoon Afzali (Ph.D.), Sheikhbahaee University, Isfahan, Iran Abstract: Considering the role of emotions while reading literary texts, the current research was designed to investigate first whether or not the participants’ emotional involvement can improve their comprehension of short stories and second, if emotional involvement while reading short stories assist students in recognizing literary elements, such as irony, symbol, theme and foreshadowing. To this end, 79 Persian speakers (30 males and 49 females) selected from the population of sophomores in one of Iranian Universities participated in the study. A questionnaire based on Miall and Kuiken’s (2002) categorization of feelings was designed to assist the students in involving their emotions while reading literary texts. There were two experimental groups and a control group. Initially, a pretest was assigned to these groups to ensure that they are homogeneous. The designed questionnaire was employed in teaching literary texts in experimental groups. At the end of the semester, a posttest was assigned to all participants. An ANOVA test indicated statistically significant difference across control and experimental groups in comprehending short stories. The Tukey HSD test was also applied to investigate where those differences lie. To address the second research question, a multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) was used; however, MANOVA test did not show any statistically significant difference across control and experimental groups in recognizing literary elements. Keywords: Teaching literature, Emotions, Literary elements 1. Introduction A multitude number of EFL learners suffer from not being able to read literary texts independently. As a result, they are deprived of enjoying the numerous values associated with literary reading. These values include the use of imagination, the readers’ appreciation of stylistic features, and the appropriateness of literature for the individuality of reader, and its value for coping with problems, as well as for relaxation and entertainment (Miall and Kuiken, 2002). This inadequacy may stem from the circumstance that the majority of the models of text comprehension focus on the cognitive aspects of reading process to the exclusion of the emotional factors involved while reading texts (Kneepkens and Zwaan, 1994). However, as Zembylas (2005, p. 466) points out “ emotion is the least investigated aspect of research on teaching, yet it is probably the aspect most often mentioned as being important and deserving more attention”. Essentially, they are not considered the by products of learning, but an indispensable ingredient of learning process. In other words, emotions play an important role in creating meaning (Hirsh, 2009, Mar, et al., 2010). As for literary studies, with the emergence of reader-response theory, proposed by Purves and Beach (1972), Bleich (1978) and Rosenblatt (1978), the object of the text researches has shifted from the writer or the text to the reader or the interaction between the reader and the