Poetry in Pandemic: A Multimodal Neuroaesthetic Study on the Emotional Reaction to the Divina Commedia Poem

Poetry elicits emotions, and emotion is a fundamental component of human ontogeny.Although neuroaesthetics is a rapidly developing field of research, few studies focus on poetry, andnone address its different modalities of fruition (MOF) of universal cultural heritage works, such asthe Divina Commedia (DC) poem. Moreover, alexithymia (AX) resulted in being a psychologicalrisk factor during the Covid-19 pandemic. The present study aims to investigate the emotionalresponse to poetry excerpts from different cantica (Inferno, Purgatorio, Paradiso) of DC with thedual objective of assessing the impact of both the structure of the poem and MOF and that of thecharacteristics of the acting voice in experts and non-experts, also considering AX. Online emotionfacial coding biosignal (BS) techniques, self-reported and psychometric measures were applied to131 literary (LS) and scientific (SS) university students. BS results show that LS globally manifestmore JOY than SS in both reading and listening MOF and more FEAR towards Inferno. Furthermore,LS and SS present different results regarding NEUTRAL emotion about acting voice. AX influenceslistening in NEUTRAL and SURPRISE expressions. DC’s structure affects DISGUST and SADNESSduring listening, regardless of participant characteristics. PLEASANTNESS varies according toDC’s structure and the acting voice, as well as AROUSAL, which is also correlated with AX. Resultsare discussed in light of recent findings in affective neuroscience and neuroaesthetics, suggestingthe critical role of poetry and listening in supporting human emotional processing.