Empathy and the Strangeness of Fiction

Empathy and the Strangeness of Fiction PDF Author: Maria C. Scott
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
ISBN: 1474463053
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 241

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Book Description
Explores how and why narrative fiction engages empathy, including Theory of MindOffers a broad overview of current scientific work on the effects of fiction-reading on empathy, including Theory of MindProvides an original intervention in the field of literary theory, centring on the reflexive properties of the fictional strangerIncludes stand-alone close readings of three novels by important French authorsThis book studies recent psychological findings which suggest that reading fiction cultivates empathy, encouraging us to be critically reflective, suspicious readers as well as participatory, 'nave' readers. Scott draws on literary theory and close readings to argue that engagement with fictional stories also teaches us to resist uncritical forms of empathy and reminds us of the limitations of our ability to understand other people. The book treats figures of the stranger in Balzac's La Fille aux yeux d'or, Stendhal's Le Rouge et le Noir and Sand's Indiana as emblematic of the strangeness of narrative fiction, both drawing us in and keeping us at a distance.

Empathy and the Strangeness of Fiction

Empathy and the Strangeness of Fiction PDF Author: Maria C. Scott
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
ISBN: 1474463053
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 241

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Book Description
Explores how and why narrative fiction engages empathy, including Theory of MindOffers a broad overview of current scientific work on the effects of fiction-reading on empathy, including Theory of MindProvides an original intervention in the field of literary theory, centring on the reflexive properties of the fictional strangerIncludes stand-alone close readings of three novels by important French authorsThis book studies recent psychological findings which suggest that reading fiction cultivates empathy, encouraging us to be critically reflective, suspicious readers as well as participatory, 'nave' readers. Scott draws on literary theory and close readings to argue that engagement with fictional stories also teaches us to resist uncritical forms of empathy and reminds us of the limitations of our ability to understand other people. The book treats figures of the stranger in Balzac's La Fille aux yeux d'or, Stendhal's Le Rouge et le Noir and Sand's Indiana as emblematic of the strangeness of narrative fiction, both drawing us in and keeping us at a distance.

Strange Narrators in Contemporary Fiction

Strange Narrators in Contemporary Fiction PDF Author: Marco Caracciolo
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
ISBN: 0803296754
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 287

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Book Description
A storyteller’s craft can often be judged by how convincingly the narrative captures the identity and personality of its characters. In this book, the characters who take center stage are “strange” first-person narrators: they are fascinating because of how they are at odds with what the reader would wish or expect to hear—while remaining reassuringly familiar in voice, interactions, and conversations. Combining literary analysis with research in cognitive and social psychology, Marco Caracciolo focuses on readers’ encounters with the “strange” narrators of ten contemporary novels, including Bret Easton Ellis’s American Psycho, Haruki Murakami’s Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World, and Mark Haddon’s The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time. Caracciolo explores readers’ responses to narrators who suffer from neurocognitive or developmental disorders, who are mentally disturbed due to multiple personality disorder or psychopathy, whose consciousness is split between two parallel dimensions or is disembodied, who are animals, or who lose their sanity. A foray into current work on reception, reader-response, cognitive literary study, and narratology, Strange Narrators in Contemporary Fiction illustrates why any encounter with a fictional text is a complex negotiation of interlaced feelings, thoughts, experiences, and interpretations.

Tropic of Violence

Tropic of Violence PDF Author: Nathacha Appanah
Publisher: Graywolf Press
ISBN: 1644451220
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 160

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Book Description


The (Un)Certain Future of Empathy in Posthumanism, Cyberculture and Science Fiction

The (Un)Certain Future of Empathy in Posthumanism, Cyberculture and Science Fiction PDF Author: Elsa Bouet
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 1848883366
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 175

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Book Description
This volume was first published by Inter-Disciplinary Press in 2015. This volume investigates the future of empathy as contemplated by posthumanism, cyberculture and science fiction. As humanity increasingly networks and communicates online, the reconfiguration of human communities through the removal and immediacy of the body challenges traditional notions of humanity and human capacity for empathy. The impact of cyberculture and posthumanism on humanity and its capacity for empathy is here assessed through research in literature, films, neuroscience, anthropology and philosophy. This volume addresses the centrality of the body to human interactions and assesses how intrinsic it is to the defining of the human. The exploration of posthuman narratives which display futuristic bodily modifications also engages with the anxieties and hopes for the future of human empathy. Research in dystopian narratives shows that these anxieties are also expressed without the tropes of bodily modifications and that ideological distancing creates the conditions necessary for a lack of empathy towards otherness.

The Oxford Handbook of Cognitive Literary Studies

The Oxford Handbook of Cognitive Literary Studies PDF Author: Lisa Zunshine
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0199978069
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 681

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Book Description
The Oxford Handbook of Cognitive Literary Studies applies developments in cognitive science to a wide range of literary texts that span multiple historical periods and numerous national literary traditions.

Mrs. Dalloway

Mrs. Dalloway PDF Author: Virginia Woolf
Publisher: Good Press
ISBN:
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 196

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Book Description
Mrs Dalloway, Virginia Woolf's fourth novel, offers the reader an impression of a single June day in London in 1923. Clarissa Dalloway, the wife of a Conservative member of parliament, is preparing to give an evening party, while the shell-shocked Septimus Warren Smith hears the birds in Regent's Park chattering in Greek. There seems to be nothing, except perhaps London, to link Clarissa and Septimus. She is middle-aged and prosperous, with a sheltered happy life behind her; Smith is young, poor, and driven to hatred of himself and the whole human race. Yet both share a terror of existence, and sense the pull of death. The world of Mrs Dalloway is evoked in Woolf's famous stream of consciousness style, in a lyrical and haunting language which has made this, from its publication in 1925, one of her most popular novels.

Strange Narrators in Contemporary Fiction

Strange Narrators in Contemporary Fiction PDF Author: Marco Caracciolo
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
ISBN: 0803296738
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 328

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Book Description
A storyteller's craft can often be judged by how convincingly the narrative captures the identity and personality of its characters. In this book, the characters who take center stage are "strange" first-person narrators: they are fascinating because of how they are at odds with what the reader would wish or expect to hear--while remaining reassuringly familiar in voice, interactions, and conversations. Combining literary analysis with research in cognitive and social psychology, Marco Caracciolo focuses on readers' encounters with the "strange" narrators of ten contemporary novels, including Bret Easton Ellis's American Psycho, Haruki Murakami's Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World, and Mark Haddon's The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time. Caracciolo explores readers' responses to narrators who suffer from neurocognitive or developmental disorders, who are mentally disturbed due to multiple personality disorder or psychopathy, whose consciousness is split between two parallel dimensions or is disembodied, who are animals, or who lose their sanity. A foray into current work on reception, reader-response, cognitive literary study, and narratology, Strange Narrators in Contemporary Fiction illustrates why any encounter with a fictional text is a complex negotiation of interlaced feelings, thoughts, experiences, and interpretations.

Stranger Faces

Stranger Faces PDF Author: Namwali Serpell
Publisher: Undelivered Lectures
ISBN: 9781945492433
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 140

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Book Description
Speculative essays that probe the mythology of the face by the author of The Old Drift

The Analogical Reader

The Analogical Reader PDF Author: Peter Dixon
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 100934417X
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 269

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Book Description
Perspective taking is a critical component of approaches to literature and narrative, but there is no coherent, broadly applicable, and process-based account of what it is and how it occurs. This book provides a multidisciplinary coverage of the topic, weaving together key insights from different disciplines into a comprehensive theory of perspective taking in literature and in life. The essential insight is that taking a perspective requires constructing an analogy between one's own personal knowledge and experience and that of the perspective taking target. This analysis is used to reassess a broad swath of research in mind reading and literary studies. It develops the dynamics of how analogy is used in perspective taking and the challenges that must be overcome under some circumstances. New empirical evidence is provided in support of the theory, and numerous examples from popular and literary fiction are used to illustrate the concepts. This title is part of the Flip it Open programme and may also be available Open Access. Check our website Cambridge Core for details.

Strange Piece of Paradise

Strange Piece of Paradise PDF Author: Terri Jentz
Publisher: Macmillan
ISBN: 9780312426699
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 756

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Book Description
Powerful, eloquent, and paced like a thriller, Strange Piece of Paradise is the electrifying account of the author's investigation into her near murder.