Narrative Absorption
Editors
| Utrecht University
| Max Planck Institute for Empirical Aesthetics
| University of Amsterdam
| Utrecht University
| University of Amsterdam
Narrative Absorption brings together research from the social sciences and Humanities to solve a number of mysteries: Most of us will have had those moments, of being totally absorbed in a book, a movie, or computer game. Typically we do not have any idea about how we ended up in such a state. Nor do we fully realize how we might have changed as we return for the fictional worlds we have visited. The feeling of being absorbed is one of the most illusive and transient feelings, but also one that motivates audiences to spend considerable amounts of time in narrative worlds, and one that is central to our understanding of the effects of narratives on beliefs and behavior. Key specialists inform the reader of this book about the nature of the peculiar state of consciousness during episodes of absorption, the perception of absorption in history, the role of absorption in meaningful experiences with narratives, the relation with related phenomena such as suspense and identification, issues of measurement, and the practical implications, for instance in education-entertainment.
Various fields have worked separately on topics of absorption, albeit using different terminology and methods, but having reached a high level of development and complexity in understanding absorption. Now is the time to bring them together. This volume will be a point of reference for years to come.
[Linguistic Approaches to Literature, 27] 2017. ix, 319 pp.
Publishing status: Available
© John Benjamins
Table of Contents
|
Acknowledgements
|
ix
|
|
1–7
|
|
|
Part I. Conceptualization of narrative absorption
|
11–153
|
|
11–27
|
|
|
29–47
|
|
|
49–67
|
|
|
69–96
|
|
|
97–118
|
|
|
119–131
|
|
|
133–153
|
|
|
Part II. Empirical studies on narrative absorption
|
158–249
|
|
157–175
|
|
|
177–197
|
|
|
199–215
|
|
|
217–249
|
|
|
Part III. Outcomes of narrative absorption
|
254–313
|
|
253–269
|
|
|
271–292
|
|
|
293–313
|
|
|
Index
|
315–319
|
“Taken together, Narrative Absorption succeeds in providing conceptual and empirical foundations for theories of absorbing narrative experiences across media and contexts. The strengths of this volume lie clearly in the close collaboration among scholars from different academic backgrounds. So far, literary scholars have frequently been criticized for appropriating scientific models for perhaps unintended uses and seeming unaware of important epistemological devices (Jackson, 2003; Ryan, 2010). The current volume, however, goes beyond metaphorical forms of appropriation of scientific theories through a coherent view of interdisciplinary relations and hands-on engagement with cognitive science itself. It presents an extensive body of research that has studied the different facets of absorbed experiences in the ways they come about and how they may affect the recipients.”
Carina Rasse, Alpen-Adria-Universität Klagenfurt, in Scientific Study of Literature 7:2 (2017)
Cited by
Cited by 13 other publications
Brereton, Pat & Gómez, Victoria
2020. Media Students, Climate Change, and YouTube Celebrities: Readings of Dear Future Generations: Sorry Video Clip.
ISLE: Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment 27:2 ► pp. 385 ff. 
Carpenter, Jordan M., Melanie C. Green & Kaitlin Fitzgerald
2018. Mind-reading motivation.
Scientific Study of Literature 8:2 ► pp. 211 ff.
Colston, Herbert L.
2019.
In How Language Makes Meaning,
Eekhof, Lynn S., Moniek M. Kuijpers, Myrthe Faber, Xin Gao, Marloes Mak, Emiel van den Hoven & Roel M. Willems
2021. Lost in a Story, Detached from the Words.
Discourse Processes ► pp. 1 ff.
Kuijpers, Moniek M.
2021.
In Style and Reader Response [Linguistic Approaches to Literature, 36],
► pp. 217 ff.
Kuiken, Don & Shawn Douglas
2018. Living metaphor as the site of bidirectional literary engagement.
Scientific Study of Literature 8:1 ► pp. 47 ff.
Lugea, Jane
2018. The year’s work in stylistics 2017.
Language and Literature: International Journal of Stylistics 27:4 ► pp. 329 ff.
Moore, Melissa M. & Melanie C. Green
2020.
In The International Encyclopedia of Media Psychology,
► pp. 1 ff.
Peer, Willie & Anna Chesnokova
2019. What literature does to our emotions, and how do we know? Empirical studies will tell.
Synopsis: Text, Context, Media :1(25)
Pianzola, Federico
2021. Presence, flow, and narrative absorption questionnaires: a scoping review.
Open Research Europe 1 ► pp. 11 ff.
Pianzola, Federico, Giuseppe Riva, Karin Kukkonen & Fabrizia Mantovani
2021. Presence, flow, and narrative absorption: an interdisciplinary theoretical exploration with a new spatiotemporal integrated model based on predictive processing.
Open Research Europe 1 ► pp. 28 ff.
Poerio, Giulia & Peter Totterdell
2020. The Effect of Fiction on the Well-Being of Older Adults: A Longitudinal RCT Intervention Study Using Audiobooks.
Psychosocial Intervention 29:1 ► pp. 29 ff.
Stockwell, Peter
2019.
In Experiencing Fictional Worlds [Linguistic Approaches to Literature, 32],
► pp. 15 ff.
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 09 june 2021. 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.
Erratum
The volume editors have requested us to add the following rectification to chapter 5.
Subjects
Communication Studies
Literature & Literary Studies
BIC Subject: CFG – Semantics, Pragmatics, Discourse Analysis
BISAC Subject: LAN009030 – LANGUAGE ARTS & DISCIPLINES / Linguistics / Pragmatics