Imagining emotions in storyworlds: physiological narrated perception and emotional mental imagery

This study explores the presentation of fictional characters’ physiological processes as a prompt for readers’ embodied experience of storyworlds through the metonymic activation of self-relevant emotion schemata. To this purpose, the presentation of characters’ internal physiological processes in two fictional samples of similar length – Rosemary Timperley’s 1955 ghost story “Harry” and chapter one in Ewan McEwan’s 2002 novel Atonement – is analysed. The findings suggests that these descriptions enrich the imagined nature of narrative emotions through underspecification, and increase opportunities for perceived self-relevance and engagement.
Source: Frontiers in Human Neuroscience - Category: Neuroscience Source Type: research