Taking Shakespeare as its starting point, this book examines why and how we read poetry, how we relate to fictional characters, and whether reading is good for you. It also focuses on key works by Browning, Auden, and Beckett, and concludes with a...
more
Taking Shakespeare as its starting point, this book examines why and how we read poetry, how we relate to fictional characters, and whether reading is good for you. It also focuses on key works by Browning, Auden, and Beckett, and concludes with a critique of contemporary ideas about art, sympathy, and community.
Introduction -- Understanding sympathy and sympathetic understanding -- Brownings strangeness -- W. H. Auden : as mirrors are lonely -- Samuel Beckett : humanity in ruins -- Epilogue : sympathy now
Taking Shakespeare as its starting point, this book examines why and how we read poetry, how we relate to fictional characters, and whether reading is good for you. It also focuses on key works by Browning, Auden, and Beckett, and concludes with a...
more
Taking Shakespeare as its starting point, this book examines why and how we read poetry, how we relate to fictional characters, and whether reading is good for you. It also focuses on key works by Browning, Auden, and Beckett, and concludes with a critique of contemporary ideas about art, sympathy, and community.
Introduction -- Understanding sympathy and sympathetic understanding -- Brownings strangeness -- W. H. Auden : as mirrors are lonely -- Samuel Beckett : humanity in ruins -- Epilogue : sympathy now
What happens when we engage with fictional characters? How do our imaginative engagements bear on our actions in the wider world? Moving between the literary and the philosophical, Sophie Ratcliffe considers the ways in which readers feel when they...
more
What happens when we engage with fictional characters? How do our imaginative engagements bear on our actions in the wider world? Moving between the literary and the philosophical, Sophie Ratcliffe considers the ways in which readers feel when they read, and how they understand ideas of feeling.On Sympathy uses dramatic monologues based on The Tempest as its focus, and broaches questions about fictional belief, morality, and the dynamics between readers, writers, and fictional characters. The book challenges conventionally accepted ideas of literary identification and sympathy, and asks why th
Includes bibliographical references (p. 237-261) and index
Electronic reproduction; Available via World Wide Web
Contents; Note on Short Titles, Texts, and Names; Introduction; 1. Understanding Sympathy and Sympathetic Understanding; 2. Browning's Strangeness; 3. W. H. Auden: 'as mirrors are lonely'; 4. Samuel Beckett: 'humanity in ruins'; Epilogue: Sympathy Now; Bibliography; Index
