Transportation and empathy

pp. 85-104

in: Anders Pettersson, The concept of literary application, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2012

Abstract

As we saw in the last chapter, understanding application makes it clearer how literature can have cognitive value. However, many would maintain that the satisfactions that literature has to offer are mostly emotional and cannot be explained through references to mechanisms like application. They would adopt the virtual-reality view, arguing that readers come into close contact with the world of the text and experience it vividly and that such affective interaction with the literary content is crucial for literature's effects on its readers.