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 88
Page xv
... fictional others' perspectives also grasp the variety and individuality of real others, but this discovery about ... characters can become mental companions to last a lifetime, and relationships across generations can be built around ...
... fictional others' perspectives also grasp the variety and individuality of real others, but this discovery about ... characters can become mental companions to last a lifetime, and relationships across generations can be built around ...
Page xviii
... characters as containing a rich inner life, not all of which is open to view” (90). Nussbaum, following the lead of Lionel Trilling, believes that learning respect for the hidden inner life of fictional characters leads readers “to ...
... characters as containing a rich inner life, not all of which is open to view” (90). Nussbaum, following the lead of Lionel Trilling, believes that learning respect for the hidden inner life of fictional characters leads readers “to ...
Page xix
... fiction can change our perspectives on unlike persons “who might otherwise seem subhuman” (48). Thus fiction offers not ... characters gave new political concepts purchase: “Reading a novel (in the eighteenth century and not before) a ...
... fiction can change our perspectives on unlike persons “who might otherwise seem subhuman” (48). Thus fiction offers not ... characters gave new political concepts purchase: “Reading a novel (in the eighteenth century and not before) a ...
Page xx
... fictional characters. Hunt concedes the difficulty of proving how eighteenth-century readers actually responded to the novels they had begun reading in large numbers. Other views have been offered about the widespread social impact of ...
... fictional characters. Hunt concedes the difficulty of proving how eighteenth-century readers actually responded to the novels they had begun reading in large numbers. Other views have been offered about the widespread social impact of ...
Page xxi
... character identification that I call reader's empathy for fictional characters experiencing hunger, dispossession, rape, humiliation, and exile. If my novel reading was to have cultivated my sympathetic imagination for the real people ...
... character identification that I call reader's empathy for fictional characters experiencing hunger, dispossession, rape, humiliation, and exile. If my novel reading was to have cultivated my sympathetic imagination for the real people ...
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