Empathy and literary reading: the case of Fräulein Else’s interior monologue

Abstract

This contribution is aimed at analyzing how empathy is instantiated when we read works of fiction and at studying which elements can improve the consonance between characters and readers. Starting from a brief summary about empathy with regard to literary texts, the paper examines the question concerning human reception of fictional characters in order to investigate how we empathize with them through the description of some elements which foster empathy: internal focalization, interior monologue and movement description. Fräulein Else by Arthur Schnitzler will serve as case study of empathic reading.