Making Sorrow Sweet: Emotion and Empathy in the Experience of Fiction. In A. Houen (Ed.), Affect and Literature (Cambridge Critical Concepts, pp. 190-210). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. doi:10.1017/9781108339339.011

In Denham, A. (2020). Making Sorrow Sweet: Emotion and Empathy in the Experience of Fiction. In A. Houen (Ed.), Affect and Literature (Cambridge Critical Concepts, pp. 190-210). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. doi:10.1017/9781108339339.011. Cambridge, UK: pp. 190-210 (2020)
  Copy   BIBTEX

Abstract

The nature and consequences of readers’ affective engagement with literature has, in recent years, captured the attention of experimental psychologists and philosophers alike. Psychological studies have focused principally on the causal mechanisms explaining our affective interactions with fictions, prescinding from questions concerning their rational justifiability. Transportation Theory, for instance, has sought to map out the mechanisms the reader tracks the narrative experientially, mirroring its descriptions through first-personal perceptual imaginings, affective and motor responses and even evaluative beliefs. Analytical philosophers, by contrast, have largely focussed on the problems fiction poses for traditional theories of rationality (as in the ‘Paradox of Fiction), challenging fiction’s wider epistemic value. The result has been a theoretical impasse in which the power of fiction to affectively ‘transport’ a reader is at once often lauded (by psychologists) as a privileged route to interpersonal understanding, and condemned (by philosophers) as an abdication of the authority of reason. This chapter surveys some of the central claims on both sides, tracing the source of the debate to competing conceptions of rationality.

Links

PhilArchive

External links

  • This entry has no external links. Add one.
Setup an account with your affiliations in order to access resources via your University's proxy server

Through your library

Similar books and articles

Review of Amie L. Thomasson, Fiction and Metaphysics[REVIEW]Achille C. Varzi - 2001 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 63 (3):723-727.
Emotion, Fiction, and Rationality: Cognitivism Vs. Non-Cognitivism.Jinhee Choi - 1999 - Dissertation, The University of Wisconsin - Madison

Analytics

Added to PP
2020-07-24

Downloads
377 (#47,847)

6 months
103 (#33,589)

Historical graph of downloads
How can I increase my downloads?

Author's Profile

A. E. Denham
Oxford University

Citations of this work

No citations found.

Add more citations

References found in this work

Fearing fictions.Kendall L. Walton - 1978 - Journal of Philosophy 75 (1):5-27.
How Can We Be Moved by the Fate of Anna Karenina.Colin Radford & Michael Weston - 1975 - Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume 49 (1):67 - 93.
Tears and Fiction.Colin Radford - 1977 - Philosophy 52 (200):208 - 213.

Add more references