The Analogical Reader

Peter Dixon is Professor Emeritus at the University of Alberta, Canada. He has authored or co-authored over 100 articles and chapters on topics such as attention, problem solving, motor control, word and discourse processing. He has worked collaboratively with Marisa Bortolussi on the empirical study of literature. Marisa Bortolussi is Professor Emerita at the University of Alberta, Canada. She has taught in French, Spanish, and Comparative Literature. Her first publications were on Hispanic literature, including a book on children's literature. With Peter Dixon she co-authored Psychonarratology (2002) and numerous articles on the empirical study of literature.

'The Analogical Reader is an absolutely groundbreaking study of perspective-taking. On the basis of new empirical evidence, it offers a coherent and process-based account of the mapping of personal knowledge and experience onto other minds (including its benefits). Dixon and Bortolussi foreground the analogy that is used to connect to the minds of others. They show that it does not matter whether readers align themselves fully with characters; the process of seeking deeper connections to understand characters that display large, perhaps even disconcerting, differences is much more crucial.' Jan Alber, University of Giessen, Germany

• 1. Introduction; 2. An analysis of perspective and perspective taking; 3. Perspective taking in life; 4. Perspective taking and literature; 5. Processing components of perspective taking; 6. Challenges to perspective taking; 7. Evidence for analogy in perspective taking; 8. Conclusions.