Empathy and the NovelOxford University Press, USA, 2007 M04 19 - 242 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. |
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Page 5
... play into read- ers ' pleasure , a phenomenon French literary theorists have described with the felicitous term jouissance.16 Experts on emotional contagion , the communication of one's mood to others , have done a better job of ...
... play into read- ers ' pleasure , a phenomenon French literary theorists have described with the felicitous term jouissance.16 Experts on emotional contagion , the communication of one's mood to others , have done a better job of ...
Page 102
... play a role , but how much influence on regular readers ' behavior can really be attributed to the opinions and teaching of literature profes- sors like myself , or an earlier generation of professors whose taste differed ? These and ...
... play a role , but how much influence on regular readers ' behavior can really be attributed to the opinions and teaching of literature profes- sors like myself , or an earlier generation of professors whose taste differed ? These and ...
Page 131
... play on readers ' appetites for vicious imagery or play with taboos , but it has not been generally understood as a corrupting aspect of narrative . Feeling with villains has been recuperated as an aspect of ethical read- ing practices ...
... play on readers ' appetites for vicious imagery or play with taboos , but it has not been generally understood as a corrupting aspect of narrative . Feeling with villains has been recuperated as an aspect of ethical read- ing practices ...
Contents
Contemporary Perspectives on Empathy | 3 |
The Literary Career of Empathy | 37 |
Readers Empathy | 65 |
Copyright | |
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activity aesthetic altruism Anil's Ghost argues authors Batson behavior believe Bestsellers Book Club brain Butler C. K. Stead chapter character identification cognitive compassion contemporary cultivation cultural Daniel Batson David 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 film fMRI gender genres Hakemulder Hoffman imagination individuals instance Kuiken literary reading Literary Response literature Martha Nussbaum Miall middlebrow mirror neurons Mistry's Moral Development motives Nancy Eisenberg narration narrative empathy novel reading novelists Nussbaum Octavia Butler Ondaatje Oprah Oprah's Book Club popular postcolonial prosocial action psychology reactions reader-response criticism readers reports representation rescuers responses to fiction result role taking role-taking shared feeling social story suggests sympathy texts theorists theory tion tive understanding University Press victims VICTORIA-L Victorian Wayne Booth Winfrey Winfrey's women writing