Imagination’s Role in Emotional Responses to Fiction

บทคัดย่อ

This essay argues that emotional responses to fiction are genuine and rational. Emotional responses are not reflexes; they are an intrinsically valuable process of deliberation. The indispensable requirement for an emotional response is imagination. When reading fiction, imagination helps us emotionally engage with the text. Imaginative involvement in reading profoundly influences the reader; it can motivate us in myriad ways and blur awareness of the difference between reality and fantasy, while also enabling understanding and sharing of the feelings of fictional characters and even authors. Lastly, imaginative resistance shows that we intuitively use the same moral standards to judge both fictional content and fact. This is evidence of the rationality of our imaginative responses to both fiction and reality.