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9781421404004 Academic Inspection Copy

Why Do We Care about Literary Characters?

  • ISBN-13: 9781421404004
  • Publisher: JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY PRESS
    Imprint: JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY PRESS
  • By Blakey Vermeule
  • Price: AUD $75.99
  • Stock: 0 in stock
  • Availability: This book is temporarily out of stock, order will be despatched as soon as fresh stock is received.
  • Local release date: 14/12/2011
  • Format: Paperback 296 pages Weight: 0g
  • Categories: Literary theory [DSA]
Description
Table of
Contents
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Blakey Vermeule wonders how readers become involved in the lives of fictional characters, people they know do not exist. Vermeule examines the ways in which readers' experiences of literature are affected by the emotional attachments they form to fictional characters and how those experiences then influence their social relationships in real life. She focuses on a range of topics, from intimate articulations of sexual desire, gender identity, ambition, and rivalry to larger issues brought on by rapid historical and economic change. Vermeule discusses the phenomenon of emotional attachment to literary characters primarily in terms of 18th-century British fiction but also considers the postmodern work of Thomas Mann, J. M. Coetzee, Ian McEwan, and Chinua Achebe. From the perspective of cognitive science, Vermeule finds that caring about literary characters is not all that different from caring about other people, especially strangers. The tools used by literary authors to sharpen and focus reader interest tap into evolved neural mechanisms that trigger a caring response. This book contributes to the emerging field of evolutionary literary criticism. Vermeule draws upon recent research in cognitive science to understand the mental processes underlying human social interactions without sacrificing solid literary criticism. People interested in literary theory, in cognitive analyses of the arts, and in Darwinian approaches to human culture will find much to ponder in Why Do We Care about Literary Characters?

Preface
Acknowledgments
1. The Fictional among Us
2. The Cognitive Dimension
3. What Hails Us?
4. The Literary Endowment: Five Mind-Reading Turns
Four Openings
Free Indirect Discourse
Machiavellian Narratives
Attention
The Drama of Differential Access to Social Information
5. The Fantasy of Exposure and Narrative Development in Eighteenth-Century Britain
6. God Novels
7. Gossip and Literary Narratives
8. What's the Matter with Miss Bates?
9. Mind Blindness
10. Postmodernism Reflects: J. M. Coetzee and the Eighteenth-Century Novel
Epilogue
Notes
Bibliography
Index

""Wide-ranging and jaunty... Vermeule is a major voice in the effort to bring the insights of cognitive science (especially evolutionary psychology) to bear on topics in eighteenth-century literary studies... We arrive at a new and exciting take on the familiar terrain of the eighteenth-century novel.""

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