Suzanne Keen - Böcker

Does reading novels evoking empathy with fictional characters really cultivate our sympathetic imagination and lead 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. Though readers' and authors' empathy certainly contribute to the emotional resonance of fiction and its success in the marketplace, Keen finds the case for altruistic consequences of novel reading inconclusive (and exaggerated by defenders of literary reading). She offers instead a detailed theory of narrative empathy, with proposals about its deployment by novelists and its results in readers. Empathy and the Novel engages with neuroscience and contemporary psychological research on empathy, bringing affect to the center of cognitive literary studies' scrutiny of narrative fiction. Drawing on narrative theory, literary history, philosophy, and contemporary 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, but its proper role in shaping the behavior of emotional readers has been debated for three centuries. Keen surveys these debates and offers a series of hypotheses about literary empathy, including narrative techniques inviting empathetic response. She argues that above all readers' perception of a text's fictiveness increases the likelihood of readers' empathy, by releasing readers from their guarded responses to the demands of real others. She confirms the centrality of narrative empathy as a strategy, as well as a subject, of contemporary novelists. Despite the disrepute of putative human universals, novelists from around the world endorse the notion of shared human emotions when they overtly call upon their readers' empathy. Consequently, Keen suggests, if narrative empathy is to be better understood, then women's reading and popular fiction must be accorded the respect of experimental inquiry.

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.

This study of narrative technique in Victorian novels introduces the concept of 'narrative annexes' whereby unexpected characters, impermissible subjects and plot-changing events are introduced within fictional worlds which otherwise exclude them. They are marked by the crossing of borders into previously unrepresented places and new genres or modes, challenging Victorian cultural and literary norms. Suzanne Keen's original readings of novels by Charlotte Brontë, Dickens, Disraeli, Hardy, Kingsley, Trollope, and Wells show these writers negotiating the boundaries of representation to reveal in narrative annexes the subjects (notably sexuality and social class) which contemporary critics sought to exclude from the realm of the novel. Fears of disease, of working men, of Popery, of dark-skinned 'others', of the poor who toil and starve in close proximity to the rectories, homes, clubs and walled gardens of Victorian polite society draw readers down narrow alleys, through thorny hedges, across desolate heaths, into narrative annexes.

This study of narrative technique in Victorian novels introduces the concept of 'narrative annexes' whereby unexpected characters, impermissible subjects and plot-changing events are introduced within fictional worlds which otherwise exclude them. They are marked by the crossing of borders into previously unrepresented places and new genres or modes, challenging Victorian cultural and literary norms. Suzanne Keen's original readings of novels by Charlotte Brontë, Dickens, Disraeli, Hardy, Kingsley, Trollope, and Wells show these writers negotiating the boundaries of representation to reveal in narrative annexes the subjects (notably sexuality and social class) which contemporary critics sought to exclude from the realm of the novel. Fears of disease, of working men, of Popery, of dark-skinned 'others', of the poor who toil and starve in close proximity to the rectories, homes, clubs and walled gardens of Victorian polite society draw readers down narrow alleys, through thorny hedges, across desolate heaths, into narrative annexes.

This pioneering collection brings together Suzanne Keen’s extensive body of work on empathy and reading, charting the development of narrative empathy as an area of inquiry in its own right and extending cross-disciplinary conversations about empathy evoked by reading. The volume offers a brief overview of the trajectory of research following the 2007 publication of Empathy and the Novel, with empathy understood as a suite of related phenomena as stimulated by representations in narratives. The book is organized around three thematic sections—theories; empathetic readers; and interdisciplinary applications—each preceded by a short framing essay. The volume features excerpts from the author’s seminal works on narrative empathy and makes available her harder-to-access contributions. The book brings different strands of the author’s research into conversation with existing debates, with the aim of inspiring future interdisciplinary research on narrative empathy. This book will be of interest to students and scholars in such fields as literary studies, cognitive science, emotion studies, affect studies, and applied contexts where empathetic practitioners work.

This pioneering collection brings together Suzanne Keen’s extensive body of work on empathy and reading, charting the development of narrative empathy as an area of inquiry in its own right and extending cross-disciplinary conversations about empathy evoked by reading. The volume offers a brief overview of the trajectory of research following the 2007 publication of Empathy and the Novel, with empathy understood as a suite of related phenomena as stimulated by representations in narratives. The book is organized around three thematic sections—theories; empathetic readers; and interdisciplinary applications—each preceded by a short framing essay. The volume features excerpts from the author’s seminal works on narrative empathy and makes available her harder-to-access contributions. The book brings different strands of the author’s research into conversation with existing debates, with the aim of inspiring future interdisciplinary research on narrative empathy. This book will be of interest to students and scholars in such fields as literary studies, cognitive science, emotion studies, affect studies, and applied contexts where empathetic practitioners work.

This revised and expanded handbook concisely introduces narrative form to advanced students of fiction and creative writing, with refreshed references and new discussions of cognitive approaches to narrative, nonfiction, and narrative emotions.