Mimetic and synthetic views of characters: How readers process “people” in fiction

Abstract

This article examines recent theories of fictional characters, and raises the issue of how far characters can be understood with reference to human intersubjectivity. On the one hand, empirical research based on theories of rhetorical narrative ethics shows that phenomena such as sympathy and empathy are very relevant for the ways readers describe their imaginative connection with fictional characters. On the other hand, traditional narratology emphasizes that readers also engage with fiction as an artefact. This article focuses on the similarities and differences in these two conceptions of what engagement with fictional characters is, and asks how much of what readers get out of fiction depends on what is portrayed, and how much is the product of their enactment of form. Building on some yet unpublished results of an empirical testing conducted earlier by Sklar, as well as narratological and cognitive analyses of the concept of character, we examine our respective theoretical intuitions and set out a cognitive-rhetorical position that we both share. In that process we also clarify the ways in which cognitive literary studies can speak to the larger purpose of reading.