Showing papers by "Marco Caracciolo published in 2016"

Difficult empathy the effect of narrative perspective on readers’ engagement with a first-person narrator

Abstract: Many claims have been advanced about the effects of specific narrative strategies on readers’ engagement with characters, but the available evidence is still limited. One question in particular stands out in the current debate. Is first-person narrative more or less conducive to empathy and trust for the protagonist than third-person, internally focalized narrative? This essay tackles this question by examining the effect of narrative perspective on readers’ responses to a complex, and potentially unreliable, character. To this end, we conducted an experimental study with 76 Dutch high-school students. Contrary to our predictions, the manipulation of narrative perspective did not affect empathy for the character, but did affect trust. We suggest that the increase in trust in third-person narrative depends on the external narrator’s authority, which validates the perspective of the protagonist. The essay discusses these and other findings, combining experimental research with a qualitative analysis of readers’ comments on the character.

Strange Narrators in Contemporary Fiction

Abstract: It is this very obliquity of thought and memory which makes mental disease such a fascinating study. Perhaps I may gain more knowledge out of the folly of this madman than I shall from the teaching of the most wise.

Narrative Pathways to the Environment - On Erin James’s Econarratology

Abstract: Erin James: The Storyworld Accord. Econarratology and Postcolonial Narratives. Lincoln / London: University of Nebraska Press 2015 (= Frontiers of Narrative Series). Pp. 308. USD 60.00. ISBN 978-0-8032-4398-9

Cognition and Evolution in London's Before Adam and Golding's The Inheritors

Abstract: Scholars working in different areas of literary studies have recently developed an interest in how literature deals with the 'deep', evolutionary history of humankind. Cross-fertilizing this line of enquiry with accounts of consciousness representation in cognitive narrative theory, my essay explores literary figurations of prehistoric mentalities and their interpretive ramifications. Through two case studies, Jack London's Before Adam (1906) and William Golding's The Inheritors (1955), I examine how fictional texts may convey the difference between modern-day cognition and the psychological life of our hominid ancestors. By investigating the narrative strategies employed by London (first-person narration, embedded narrative) and Golding (internal focalization), I advance hypotheses about how such devices may guide readers' engagements with the two novellas' protagonists and shape their interpretations. I argue that, while London renders the cognitive specificity of proto-humans in purely negative terms - that is, by subtracting capacities that we tend to associate with Homo sapiens - Golding stages a complex trade-off between archaic and modern mentalities. In different ways, both London's and Golding's novellas can prompt reflection on the cognitive evolution of the Homo genus, potentially involving readers in the challenges of thinking about evolutionary phenomena.