Empathy and the Strangeness of Fiction by Maria C Scott
Explores how and why narrative fiction engages empathy, including Theory of Mind Offers a broad overview of current scientific work on the effects of fiction-reading on empathy, including Theory of MindProvides an original intervention in the field of literary theory, centring on the reflexive properties of the fictional strangerIncludes stand-alone close readings of three novels by important French authors This book studies recent psychological findings which suggest that reading fiction cultivates empathy, encouraging us to be critically reflective, suspicious readers as well as participatory, ‘naïve’ readers. Scott draws on literary theory and close readings to argue that engagement with fictional stories also teaches us to resist uncritical forms of empathy and reminds us of the limitations of our ability to understand other people. The book treats figures of the stranger in Balzac’s La Fille aux yeux d’or, Stendhal’s Le Rouge et le Noir and Sand’s Indiana as emblematic of the strangeness of narrative fiction, both drawing us in and keeping us at a distance.
Maria CScott’s excellent, engaging new book asks what fictional strangers might tell us about readers’ empathy in encounters with fiction. [...] a strangeness so very brilliantly illuminated here by Scott, in this absorbing book abounding with insights for literary and empirical scholars alike. -- Matt Phillips, University of London * French Studies *
In this elegantly written and consistently interesting study of representations of and encounters with strangers in three nineteenth-century French novels—by Balzac, Stendhal, and Sand—Maria C. Scott deploys ideas drawn from the interdisciplinary study of empathy to illuminate the dynamics of fiction reading. -- Suzanne Keen, Hamilton College * Modern Language Review *
Does fiction train us in empathy? Scott’s clever and wonderfully engaging book provides a powerful response to correct the idea of empathy as a simple key to unlock others and instead shows how empathy is a form of seduction. The task of the reader is both to fall for this seduction and to resist it. -- Fritz Breithaupt, author of The Dark Sides of Empathy and Provost Prof at Indiana University
In this elegantly written and consistently interesting study of representations of and encounters with strangers in three nineteenth-century French novels—by Balzac, Stendhal, and Sand—Maria C. Scott deploys ideas drawn from the interdisciplinary study of empathy to illuminate the dynamics of fiction reading. -- Suzanne Keen, Hamilton College * Modern Language Review *
Does fiction train us in empathy? Scott’s clever and wonderfully engaging book provides a powerful response to correct the idea of empathy as a simple key to unlock others and instead shows how empathy is a form of seduction. The task of the reader is both to fall for this seduction and to resist it. -- Fritz Breithaupt, author of The Dark Sides of Empathy and Provost Prof at Indiana University
Maria C. Scott is Associate Professor of French Literature and Thought at the University of Exeter. She has published two monographs, Baudelaire’s ‘Le Spleen de Paris’: Shifting Perspectives (Ashgate,2005) and Stendhal’s Less-Loved Heroines: Fiction, Freedom, and the Female (Legenda,2013). The latter was published in French translation as Stendhal, la liberté et les héroïnes mal aimées (Classiques Garnier, 2015).The author is generally interested in the identificatory dynamics and blind spots that can affect literary interpretation.
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9781474463034 |
| ISBN 10 | 1474463037 |
| Title | Empathy and the Strangeness of Fiction |
| Author | Maria C Scott |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Hardback |
| Publisher | Edinburgh University Press |
| Year published | 2020-04-28 |
| Number of pages | 240 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |