Before Fiction

The novel as therapy: Ministrations of voice in an age of risk

“…If we examine the passage more closely, however, what is evident is the emphasis on the way that narcissistic sentimentality is linked specifically and quite emphatically to visual perception, to the act of looking and seeing; we are told how 'affecting' Yorick finds 'the picture' of the bird, how he looks closer through the cage door 'to take his picture and how he there 'beheld 40 Franzen (2010), interview with Helena de Bertodano. 41 For a thorough discussion of early concerns about the fictionality of fiction, see Paige (2011). his body'. It is only when in imagination, in his inner ear, that he 'heard his chains upon his legs' that he was then able to see 'the iron enter his soul-I burst into tears-I could not sustain the picture of confinement which my fancy had drawn '.…”