Empathy and the NovelOxford University Press, 2007 M04 19 - 274 pages Does empathy felt while reading fiction actually cultivate a sense of connection, leading to altruistic actions on behalf of real others? Empathy and the Novel presents a comprehensive account of the relationships among novel reading, empathy, and altruism. Drawing on psychology, narrative theory, neuroscience, literary history, philosophy, and recent scholarship in discourse processing, Keen brings together resources and challenges for the literary study of empathy and the psychological study of fiction reading. Empathy robustly enters into affective responses to fiction, yet its role in shaping the behavior of emotional readers has been debated for three centuries. Keen surveys these debates and illustrates the techniques that invite empathetic response. She argues that the perception of fictiveness increases the likelihood of readers' empathy in part by releasing them from the guarded responses necessitated by the demands of real others. Narrative empathy is a strategy and subject of contemporary novelists from around the world, writers who tacitly endorse the potential universality of human emotions when they call upon their readers' empathy. If narrative empathy is to be taken seriously, Keen suggests, then women's reading and responses to popular fiction occupy a central position in literary inquiry, and cognitive literary studies should extend its range beyond canonical novels. In short, Keen's study extends the playing field for literature practitioners, causing it to resemble more closely that wide open landscape inhabited by readers. |
From inside the book
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Page viii
... novel reading, experiences of narrative empathy, and altruism has not yet been proven to exist. Empathy robustly enters into affective responses to fiction, but its role in shaping the behavior of emotional readers has been debated for ...
... novel reading, experiences of narrative empathy, and altruism has not yet been proven to exist. Empathy robustly enters into affective responses to fiction, but its role in shaping the behavior of emotional readers has been debated for ...
Page ix
... fiction, the loss of which (for large numbers of nonreaders) is indeed to be regretted. Understanding the aesthetic effects of narrative empathy illuminates the responses of feeling brains to the word-wrought spaces and inhabitants of ...
... fiction, the loss of which (for large numbers of nonreaders) is indeed to be regretted. Understanding the aesthetic effects of narrative empathy illuminates the responses of feeling brains to the word-wrought spaces and inhabitants of ...
Page x
... literary criticism. Despite the now habitual questioning of the coherence of individual selves in literature, theory, and literary study, a vigorous notion of character identification entailing readers' responses to imagined persons ...
... literary criticism. Despite the now habitual questioning of the coherence of individual selves in literature, theory, and literary study, a vigorous notion of character identification entailing readers' responses to imagined persons ...
Page xi
Suzanne Keen. responses to novels. For instance, consider the commonplace that first-person fiction more readily evokes feeling responsiveness than the whole variety of third-person narrative situations. Even a college sophomore with a ...
Suzanne Keen. responses to novels. For instance, consider the commonplace that first-person fiction more readily evokes feeling responsiveness than the whole variety of third-person narrative situations. Even a college sophomore with a ...
Page xii
... fiction. Along the way, I offer a series of hypotheses about narrative ... responses to fictional characters and situations occur more readily for ... fiction. Several observations help explain the differences in readers' responses. Most ...
... fiction. Along the way, I offer a series of hypotheses about narrative ... responses to fictional characters and situations occur more readily for ... fiction. Several observations help explain the differences in readers' responses. Most ...
Contents
1 Contemporary Perspectives on Empathy | 3 |
2 The Literary Career of Empathy | 37 |
3 Readers Empathy | 65 |
4 Empathy in the Marketplace | 101 |
5 Authors Empathy | 121 |
6 Contesting Empathy | 145 |
A Collection of Hypotheses about Narrative Empathy | 169 |
Notes | 173 |
Works Cited | 209 |
Index | 235 |
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Common terms and phrases
activity aesthetic altruism Anil’s Ghost another’s argues authors Batson behavior believe Book Club brain Butler C. K. Stead chapter character identification character’s cognitive compassion contemporary cultivation cultural Daniel Batson discussion effects of reading Efuru emotional contagion emotional responses empa empathetic reading experiences empathetic response empathic inaccuracy emphasize ethical false empathy female Female Genital Cutting fictional characters fictional worlds fMRI gender genres Hakemulder Hoffman imagination individuals instance intentionally left blank J. K. Rowling Kuiken literary reading literature Martha Nussbaum Miall middlebrow mirror neurons Mistry’s Moral Development motives Nancy Eisenberg narration narrative empathy novel reading novelists Nussbaum Octavia Butler Ondaatje one’s Oprah personal distress popular postcolonial prosocial action psychologists reactions readers representation rescuers responses to fiction result role taking role-taking shared feeling social story suggests sympathy texts theorists theory tion tive understanding universal victims Victorian Wayne Booth Winfrey Winfrey’s women writing