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Books > Language & Literature > Literature: history & criticism > Literary theory
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Empathy and the Novel (Hardcover)
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Empathy and the Novel (Hardcover)
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Does reading novels evoking empathy with fictional characters
really cultivate our sympathetic imagination and lead 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. Though readers' and authors' empathy
certainly contribute to the emotional resonance of fiction and its
success in the marketplace, Keen finds the case for altruistic
consequences of novel reading inconclusive (and exaggerated by
defenders of literary reading). She offers instead a detailed
theory of narrative empathy, with proposals about its deployment by
novelists and its results in readers. Empathy and the Novel engages
with neuroscience and contemporary psychological research on
empathy, bringing affect to the center of cognitive literary
studies' scrutiny of narrative fiction.
Drawing on narrative theory, literary history, philosophy, and
contemporary 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, but its proper role in
shaping the behavior of emotional readers has been debated for
three centuries. Keen surveys these debates and offers a series of
hypotheses about literary empathy, including narrative techniques
inviting empathetic response. She argues that above all readers'
perception of a text's fictiveness increases the likelihood of
readers' empathy, by releasing readers from their guarded responses
to the demands of real others. She confirms the centrality of
narrative empathy as a strategy, as well as a subject,
ofcontemporary novelists. Despite the disrepute of putative human
universals, novelists from around the world endorse the notion of
shared human emotions when they overtly call upon their readers'
empathy. Consequently, Keen suggests, if narrative empathy is to be
better understood, then women's reading and popular fiction must be
accorded the respect of experimental inquiry.
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