The Art of Sympathy in Fiction

Forms of ethical and emotional persuasion

| University of Helsinki
HardboundAvailable
ISBN 9789027233509 | EUR 99.00 | USD 149.00
 
e-Book
ISBN 9789027272201 | EUR 99.00 | USD 149.00
 
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By taking an interdisciplinary approach — with methods drawn from narratology, aesthetics, social psychology, education, and the empirical study of literature — The Art of Sympathy in Fiction will interest scholars in a variety of fields. Its focus is the sympathetic effects of stories, and the possible ways these feelings can contribute to what has been called the “moral imagination.” Part I examines the dynamics of readers’ beliefs regarding fictional characters and the influence of those impressions on the emotions that readers experience. The book then turns its attention to sympathy, providing a comprehensive definition and considering the ways in which it operates in life and in literature. Part I concludes with a discussion of the narratological and rhetorical features of fictional narratives that theoretically elicit sympathy in readers. Part II applies these theories to four stories that persuade readers to sympathize with characters who seem unsympathetic. Finally, based on empirical findings from the responses of adolescent readers, Part III considers pedagogical approaches that can help students reflect on emotional experiences that result from reading fiction.
[Linguistic Approaches to Literature, 15] 2013.  xiv, 192 pp.
Publishing status: Available
Table of Contents
Cited by (28)

Cited by 28 other publications

Karpenko-Seccombe, Tatyana
2023. “The unlikeliest twins”: the role of intertextual foregrounding and defamiliarisation in creating empathy in Meursault, contre-enquête . Journal of Literary Semantics 52:2  pp. 191 ff. DOI logo
Malecki, W P, Alexa Weik von Mossner, Piotr Sorokowski & Tomasz Frackowiak
2023. Extinction Stories Matter: The Impact of Narrative Representations of Endangered Species Across Media. ISLE: Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment 30:4  pp. 846 ff. DOI logo
Borkfelt, Sune
2022. Literary Narratives and the Empathics of Slaughter. In Reading Slaughter [Palgrave Studies in Animals and Literature, ],  pp. 33 ff. DOI logo
Bruehler, Bart B.
2022. Sacred Stories for Human Beings with Bodies and Brains. Biblical Theology Bulletin: Journal of Bible and Culture 52:4  pp. 204 ff. DOI logo
Fosbraey, Glenn
2022. Eminem and Language. In Reading Eminem,  pp. 121 ff. DOI logo
Zhao, Minru & Dechao Li
2022. Translator positioning in characterisation: a corpus-based study of English translations ofLuotuo Xiangzi. Perspectives 30:6  pp. 1074 ff. DOI logo
Mikić, Marijana
2021. Mind, Body, and Race in Jessie Redmon Fauset’s Plum Bun . Anglia 139:4  pp. 673 ff. DOI logo
Crewe, Jonathon
2020. Another London, another point of view: the use of defamiliarisation to elicit empathy in the reader for the white working-class protagonist inAnother Londonand their ‘real-world’ equivalents. New Writing 17:3  pp. 272 ff. DOI logo
Schneider-Mayerson, Matthew
2020. “Just as in the Book”? The Influence of Literature on Readers’ Awareness of Climate Injustice and Perception of Climate Migrants. ISLE: Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment 27:2  pp. 337 ff. DOI logo
Castiglione, Davide
2019. Processing Baseline: The Easy Poem. In Difficulty in Poetry,  pp. 197 ff. DOI logo
Polvinen, Merja, Howard Sklar & Anezka Kuzmicova
2019. Mimetic and synthetic views of characters: How readers process “people” in fiction. Cogent Arts & Humanities 6:1  pp. 1687257 ff. DOI logo
Tobón, Daniel Jerónimo
2019. Empathy and Sympathy: Two Contemporary Models of Character Engagement. In The Palgrave Handbook of the Philosophy of Film and Motion Pictures,  pp. 865 ff. DOI logo
Bortolussi, Marisa, Peter Dixon & Christopher Linden
2018. Putting Perspective Taking in Perspective. Review of General Psychology 22:2  pp. 178 ff. DOI logo
Korthals Altes, Liesbeth & Hanna Meretoja
2018. Ethics and Literature. In The Palgrave Handbook of Philosophy and Literature,  pp. 601 ff. DOI logo
Mäkelä, Maria & Merja Polvinen
2018. Narration and Focalization. Poetics Today 39:3  pp. 495 ff. DOI logo
von Mossner, Alexa Weik
2018. Green states of mind? Cognition, emotion and environmental framing. Green Letters 22:3  pp. 313 ff. DOI logo
von Mossner, Alexa Weik
2019. Why We Care about (Non) fictional Places. Poetics Today 40:3  pp. 559 ff. DOI logo
Biwu, Shang
2017. Delving into Impossible Storyworlds of Terror: The Unnaturalness of Hassan Blasim’s Short Narrative Fiction. arcadia 52:1  pp. 183 ff. DOI logo
Eikonsalo, Sini
2017. "[S]ometimes America needs to be pushed": Amy Waldman's The Submission and the early American 9/11 novels. Brno studies in English :2  pp. [79] ff. DOI logo
Kuzmičová, Anežka, Anne Mangen, Hildegunn Støle & Anne Charlotte Begnum
2017. Literature and readers’ empathy: A qualitative text manipulation study. Language and Literature: International Journal of Stylistics 26:2  pp. 137 ff. DOI logo
Lewis, Michael Jay
2017. The Myth Isn’t Mine but Its Fictionality Is: Alger’sRagged Dick, Twain/Beach’s “Stephen Girard,” and the Reader in Training. Lit: Literature Interpretation Theory 28:4  pp. 317 ff. DOI logo
Lucchi Basili, Lorenza & Pier Sacco
2017. Tie-Up Cycles in Long-Term Mating. Part II: Fictional Narratives and the Social Cognition of Mating. Challenges 8:1  pp. 6 ff. DOI logo
Nayabpour, Karam
2017. Raymond Carver’in A Small, Good Thing Adlı Hikâyesinde Eşduyum Duygularının Etkinleştirilmesi. Selçuk Üniversitesi Edebiyat Fakültesi Dergisi :38  pp. 265 ff. DOI logo
Cha, Kyung-Ho
2016. Die literarische Darstellung der Flüchtlinge und die Kritik des medialen Menschenrechtsdiskurses in Elfriede Jelineks Die Schutzbefohlenen. Mitteilungen des Deutschen Germanistenverbandes 63:4  pp. 358 ff. DOI logo
Mahlberg, Michaela & Peter Stockwell
2016. Chapter 13. Point and CLiC. In Scientific Approaches to Literature in Learning Environments [Linguistic Approaches to Literature, 24],  pp. 253 ff. DOI logo
Hillebrandt, Claudia
2015. Figur und Emotion. Mitteilungen des Deutschen Germanistenverbandes 62:3  pp. 212 ff. DOI logo
McIntyre, Dan
2014. The year’s work in stylistics 2013. Language and Literature: International Journal of Stylistics 23:4  pp. 389 ff. DOI logo
Sklar, Howard
2013. The Many Voices of Charlie Gordon. In Disability in Science Fiction,  pp. 47 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 16 september 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.

Subjects

Literature & Literary Studies

Theoretical literature & literary studies

Main BIC Subject

CFG: Semantics, Pragmatics, Discourse Analysis

Main BISAC Subject

LAN005050: LANGUAGE ARTS & DISCIPLINES / Writing / Fiction Writing
ONIX Metadata
ONIX 2.1
ONIX 3.0
U.S. Library of Congress Control Number:  2012046162 | Marc record