"Literature could be said to be a sort of disciplined technique for arousing certain emotions." Could you elaborate on the "disciplined technique"?

This idea that one needs "disciplined techniques" to arouse emotions seems to be to be a curious combination of the Neo-Classical and the Romantic ideology. While the Romantic idea of the emotive purpose of literature is kept intact, the stipulation of orderly methods adds to a Neo-Classical prescriptiveness. But, in the 20th century, with the Russian formalists, we have seen further insistence on technique, form and form--the dynamics of the devising of a literary text and it seems to continue even in Postmodernist literature.

The stress is on precision, order, synchronization. As Aristotle implied in Poetics, there is indeed, a relation between order and beauty. Order and discipline always evoke beauty. The Romantics and the Sur-realists who believe in automatic writing might think otherwise. To them, the imposition of an order on the chaotic flow of human experience is problematic and escapist.