In Defense of the Art: How Literary Fiction Promotes Empathy

This article, written in the form of an untimely academic novella is a text, which explores academic authoring as thinking and writing practice in a place called Sweden. The aim is on inquiries of geographical space, place, and academia, and the interrelation between the social and symbolic formation of class, gender and whiteness. The novella uses different writing strategies and visual representations such as documentary writing and photographing from the research process, letters to a friend, and memories from childhood, based on three generations of women's lives. The methodology can be described as a critical reflexive writing strategy inspired by poststructuralist and postcolonial feminist theory and literary fiction, and additionally by methodological approaches in the humanities and social sciences, such as theorizing of letters, memory work, and narrative, and autobiographical approaches. In particular, it draws on work by the theorist critic and writer of fiction, Hélène Cixous, and the feminist author and theorist Charlotte Perkins Gilman, drawing on interpretation of Cixous' essay “Enter the Theatre” and Gilman's story “The Yellow Wallpaper.” Characteristics of the untimely academic novella elaborate with possible forms of the symbolic, visual, and performative photographic and sensory in writing research; furthermore, time, social change, and unfinal endings play a pervasive role. It may be read as a story that situates and theorizes embodyment, landscape, and power through the interweaving of forest rural farming spaces and academic office spaces by tracing autobiographical imprints of an untimely feminist author. “The Snow Angel and Other Imprints” is the second article in a trilogy of untimely academic novellas. The first, with the title “The Professor's Chair,” was published in Swedish in 2007 (in the anthology “Genus och det akademiska skrivandets former,” (Eds.) Bränström Öhman & Livholts), and forthcoming in English in the journal Life Writing 2010.

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Two Kinds of Imaginative Vividness

Canadian Journal of Philosophy ◽

10.1017/can.2020.54 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 51 (1) ◽

pp. 33-47

Author(s):

Julia Langkau

Keyword(s):

Explanatory Power ◽

The Other ◽

Literary Fiction ◽

Emotional Engagement ◽

Mental Images ◽

Other Hand ◽

The One ◽

Epistemic Role

AbstractThis paper argues that we should distinguish two different kinds of imaginative vividness: vividness of mental images and vividness of imaginative experiences. Philosophy has focussed on mental images, but distinguishing more complex vivid imaginative experiences from vivid mental images can help us understand our intuitions concerning the notion as well as the explanatory power of vividness. In particular, it can help us understand the epistemic role imagination can play on the one hand and our emotional engagement with literary fiction on the other hand.

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Micromégas: Altered Body–Environment Scaling in Literary Fiction

Frontiers in Psychology ◽

10.3389/fpsyg.2016.00556 ◽

2016 ◽

Vol 7 ◽

Author(s):

Sebastian Dieguez

Keyword(s):

Literary Fiction

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Dr Johnson's Concept of Literary Fiction

The Modern Language Review ◽

10.2307/3723086 ◽

1967 ◽

Vol 62 (4) ◽

pp. 598

Author(s):

James B. Misenheimer

Keyword(s):

Literary Fiction

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Compulsion to Repeat

Jahrbuch der Gesellschaft für Kinder- und Jugendliteraturforschung ◽

10.21248/gkjf-jb.6 ◽

2017 ◽

pp. 9-35

Author(s):

Mavis Reimer ◽

Deanna England ◽

Melanie Dennis Unrau ◽

Nyala Ali

Keyword(s):

Nineteenth Century ◽

Young People ◽

Children And Adolescents ◽

Literary Fiction ◽

High Quality ◽

Series Fiction ◽

Compulsion To Repeat

Beginning of the article: There is a curious gap in the scholarship on texts for young people: while series fiction has been an important stream of publishing for children and adolescents at least since the last decades of the nineteenth century, the scholarship on these texts has not been central to the development of theories on and criticism of texts for young people. The focus of scholarship is much more likely to be on stand-alone, high-quality texts of literary fiction.

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Trends in Reading Literary Fiction in Print and Cyber Media by Undergraduate Students of Hasanuddin University

International Journal of Education and Practice ◽

10.18488/journal.61.2019.72.66.77 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 7 (2) ◽

pp. 66-77

Author(s):

Fathu Rahman ◽

M Amir P ◽

Tammasse

Keyword(s):

Young People ◽

Cross Section ◽

Undergraduate Students ◽

Electronic Devices ◽

Electronic Media ◽

Literary Fiction ◽

Electronic Medium ◽

Wide Cross ◽

Ease Of Access ◽

Book Format

This research investigated the trends in reading literary fiction by students of Hasanuddin University and their main reasons for reading works of fiction. Reading tendencies were grouped into types, reading of fiction in print and fiction in electronic (cyber) media. The purposes of this study were: 1) to quantify the literary fiction reading media preferred by students; 2) to identify specific reasons for their choice of media; 3) to identify perceived personal benefits obtained from reading literary fiction, and 4) to evaluate readers’ personal choices in terms of contents. The majority of students preferred to read using electronic media (62%), although a substantial majority preferred the classical printed book format (38%). The reasons given for preferring cyber literature (defined as works of fiction presented in an electronic medium) to printed literature were mainly practical, such as ease of access using electronic devices (tablets, computers, smartphones, etc.) as well as capacity and versatility, and that one multi-functional device can hold many books or other reading media. This research indicates that young people view reading fiction not only as entertainment, but also as a valuable and rewarding activity. The trend towards electronic media provides a growing and increasingly used opportunity for casual readers and enthusiasts to access and enjoy a wide cross-section of literary fiction.

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Miracula s. Willehadi: Prospects for Studying “Unreliable” Sources

Istoriya ◽

10.18254/s207987840016950-4 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 12 (8 (106)) ◽

pp. 0

Author(s):

Yulia Arnautova

Keyword(s):

Everyday Life ◽

Cognitive Theory ◽

17Th Century ◽

Literary Fiction ◽

Early Medieval ◽

Communicative Intent ◽

Pragmatic Function

The article deals with the heuristic potential of early medieval collections of saints' miracles (libri miraculorum, miracula) which are rarely studied in anthropologically oriented historiography, because they are literary fiction and, unlike the 12—17th century miracula, cannot serve as sources for studying folk piety or everyday life. Using the example of St. Willehadi's miracles (Miracula s. Willehadi, 860—865) by Bishop Ansgar of Bremen, the article analyzes the possibility of involving texts considered “unreliable” in terms of the facts described in them, within the framework of the cognitive theory of communication. The approach to the miraculous text as a message containing meaning-generating representations, which have a distinctly expressed communicative intent, allows to reassess its content, which in traditional studies is usually devalued as “hagiographic topics”, and to establish the pragmatic function of the text (causa scribendi), which is not always limited to the proof of the sanctity of the hero.

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