Empathy and the NovelOxford University Press, 19.04.2007 - 274 Seiten 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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Seite vii
... Nussbaum advocates (Cultivating Humanity 90). Discover compassion through “The Lion and the Mouse” or “The Legend of the Dipper” writes William J. Bennett (Children's Book of Virtues 6–7). Shed your prejudices through novel reading ...
... Nussbaum advocates (Cultivating Humanity 90). Discover compassion through “The Lion and the Mouse” or “The Legend of the Dipper” writes William J. Bennett (Children's Book of Virtues 6–7). Shed your prejudices through novel reading ...
Seite xviii
... Nussbaum sees novel reading as one of the core strategies for building better world citizens capable of extending love and compassion to unknown others. Encountering Henry James or George Eliot (not coincidentally two canonical writers ...
... Nussbaum sees novel reading as one of the core strategies for building better world citizens capable of extending love and compassion to unknown others. Encountering Henry James or George Eliot (not coincidentally two canonical writers ...
Seite xix
... Nussbaum and Pinker believe, then why wouldn't history record some pretty dramatic effects of the rise of the novel? Hunt argues that the novel “disseminated a new psychology and a new social and political order” through its narrative ...
... Nussbaum and Pinker believe, then why wouldn't history record some pretty dramatic effects of the rise of the novel? Hunt argues that the novel “disseminated a new psychology and a new social and political order” through its narrative ...
Seite xxi
... Nussbaum concedes, “sympathy inspired by literary imagining does not immediately effect political change” (Cultivating 97). It would be comforting to believe that links between novel reading, empathy, and altruism or committed action in ...
... Nussbaum concedes, “sympathy inspired by literary imagining does not immediately effect political change” (Cultivating 97). It would be comforting to believe that links between novel reading, empathy, and altruism or committed action in ...
Seite 18
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Inhalt
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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Empathy and the Novel Broadus Professor of English Suzanne Keen,Suzanne Keen Eingeschränkte Leseprobe - 2007 |
Häufige Begriffe und Wortgruppen
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