A TAXONOMY OF THE EMOTIONS OF LITERARY RESPONSE AND A THEORY OF IDENTIFICATION IN FICTIONAL NARRATIVE

A taxonomy of emotions of literary response is presented. Some emotions occur as readers confront a text: they depend on curiosity as new material is assimilated to schemata, or on dishabituation as schemata accommodate. Further modes of emotion arise if readers enter the world of a story: they arise as a writer represents eliciting patterns of emotion and the reader responds with sympathy as story characters face these patterns, from personal memories of emotion, and by identification with characters' goals and plans. Based on cognitive theory and literary criticism, a theory of identification in fictional literature is presented, derived from Aristotle's concept mimesis. The usual translations, 'imitation' or 'representation', are misleading: mimesis means something closer to 'simulation', as in computers. Fictional simulations run on people's minds. For them to run successfully readers (a) adopt a character's goals and use their own planning procedures to connect actions together meaningfully, (b) form mental models of imagined worlds, (c) receive speech acts addressed to them by the writer, and (d) integrate disparate elements to create a unified experience. In providing materials for these functions, great writers allow readers to respond creatively, to feel moved emotionally, to understand within themselves some of the relations between actions and emotions, and sometimes to undergo cognitive change. © 1994.