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
Results 6-10 of 68
Page xiv
... reading. The position of the reader with respect to the author's strategic empathizing in fictional world-making ... effects, including those offered by philosophers and psychologists, to critical scrutiny. Too often these theories have been ...
... reading. The position of the reader with respect to the author's strategic empathizing in fictional world-making ... effects, including those offered by philosophers and psychologists, to critical scrutiny. Too often these theories have been ...
Page xvi
... reader would question the importance of novel reading if it produces the vocations of writers themselves? That all of these desirable effects of novel reading fall into jeopardy when a nation stops reading certainly ought to give us ...
... reader would question the importance of novel reading if it produces the vocations of writers themselves? That all of these desirable effects of novel reading fall into jeopardy when a nation stops reading certainly ought to give us ...
Page xix
... effects of the rise of the novel? Hunt argues that the novel “disseminated a new psychology and a new social and ... readers in and making them feel “passionately” involved in the story. This new experience of empathy with characters gave new ...
... effects of the rise of the novel? Hunt argues that the novel “disseminated a new psychology and a new social and ... readers in and making them feel “passionately” involved in the story. This new experience of empathy with characters gave new ...
Page xxiii
... readers in addition to myself in order to move beyond introspection in discovering what readers say about the effects of their novel reading. I compare this anecdotal evidence with the few scholarly, empirical studies of reading, giving ...
... readers in addition to myself in order to move beyond introspection in discovering what readers say about the effects of their novel reading. I compare this anecdotal evidence with the few scholarly, empirical studies of reading, giving ...
Page xxv
... consequences of empathetic reading experiences have yet to be demonstrated, the ardency of readers and the perseverance of novelists give pause to the skeptic who would argue that literature makes nothing happen. Simple accounts of the ...
... consequences of empathetic reading experiences have yet to be demonstrated, the ardency of readers and the perseverance of novelists give pause to the skeptic who would argue that literature makes nothing happen. Simple accounts of the ...
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