Empathy and literary style

Abstract

This article presents the design, methodology, and materials of an inter-Nordic, empirical study of literary reading among students in teacher education, in which relations between literary style and experiential aspects of literary reading (e.g. empathy and transportation) were assessed empirically. The primary aim of the article is to introduce paradigms and measures from interdisciplinary empirical research on literary reading which is less known in a Nordic context but which is rapidly gaining momentum internationally. The participants in the study read Katherine Mansfield's short story "The Fly" (1922) in the original version versus in a manipulated version in which typical features of literariness (e.g. metaphors and similes) were removed. Combining quantitative measures of empathy, appreciation of literature, and aspects of reading engagement with qualitative methods, the aim is to probe deeper into readers' subjective reading experience. K E Y W O R D S literariness, literary reading experience, qualitative methods, quantitative methods

Literacy education for citizenship across the lifespan

“…While language, literature and literacy all form core components of subject English in Australia (ACARA, 2012 ), it is historically and primarily literature, in our country, and in other western nations, that is charged with the work of developing a future citizenry (Hunter, 1988 ; Patterson, 2008 ). The history of English education in British and colonised contexts shows consistent arguments for the capacities of literature to enable students to access experiences beyond their own, become ‘spectators’ (McLean Davies et al, 2022 ; Squire, 1968 ) of other lives and ways of being, and through this develop empathy (Mangen et al, 2018 ), expand their own narratives and reconsider social possibilities for the future (Dale, 2012 ). Like previous scholars, in recent times, researchers concerned with developing a global, empathetic citizenry have turned to the possibilities of diverse literary works and the teaching of literature in schools (Holmes, 2019 ) and universities (Saleem & Ilyas, 2019 ).…”