When Fiction Feels Real: Representation and the Reading Mind
Author Description
This Work Explores Questions That Are Central To Literary Experience But Remain Difficult For Critics To Explain, Such As How Novels Can Seem To Transport Readers To Fictional Worlds That Feel Real, Why Literary Characters Can Come To Seem Like Intimate Friends, And What Is Uniquely Pleasurable About Reading Fiction. Introduction: A Novel Approach To Reading -- Tolstoy's Embodied Reader: Grasping The Fictional World -- Enduring Minds In Austen: Becoming Familiar With Fictional Characters -- Organizing Things In Dickens: Comprehension And Narrative Form -- George Eliot's Promise Of More: How Realism Enchants The Everyday -- When Novels End: Hardy And The Liberty Of Literary Experience -- Conclusion: On Mimesis. Elaine Auyoung. Includes Index. Includes Bibliographical References And Index.
Menrva's Summary
THE THESIS
This work investigates the cognitive mechanisms that allow readers to experience fictional worlds and characters as tangible, authentic realities. Elaine Auyoung, a scholar of nineteenth-century literature, synthesizes cognitive science with literary analysis to explain how narrative techniques facilitate the illusion of reality. She argues that the pleasure of reading stems from the mind's active engagement in constructing and maintaining these simulated experiences.
THE SCOPE MAP
What You Will Find
- Cognitive frameworks for understanding reader immersion and character familiarity
- Analysis of narrative techniques in works by Tolstoy, Austen, Dickens, Eliot, and Hardy
- Examination of the psychological processes behind narrative comprehension and mimesis
Scope Limits
- The study focuses primarily on nineteenth-century realist novels rather than contemporary or experimental fiction
- It does not provide a comprehensive history of literary theory, focusing instead on the cognitive aspects of the reading experience
THE AUTHORITY PERSPECTIVE
Scholars and critics recognize this text as a significant contribution to the intersection of cognitive science and literary studies. Readers frequently note the academic density of the prose, which provides a rigorous framework for understanding the mechanics of literary immersion.
Page Count:
0
Publication Date:
1900-01-01
Publisher:
Oxford University Press,
ISBN-10:
0190845503
ISBN-13:
9780190845506
Non-Fiction
Reading Psychology of
Fiction
Literary theory
Psychology of Reading
Literary Criticism
English fiction
In literature
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